


boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

by elkeihs



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Lots of Angst, M/M, Multi, but breaks his own each time too, but happy epilogue!, crazy timeline that might be historically inaccurate!, he breaks hearts, i love pain, immortal!sicheng, oh gets a bit pg13 around chapter 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-08-02 14:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16306541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elkeihs/pseuds/elkeihs
Summary: sicheng is eternally 18, and his bones are straining under the weight of all the lives he's living. again and again, he loves, when all he does is run away.("lie to yourself, but don't lie to me." the words skim the surface of the beginnings of a truth he cannot bear to accept. sicheng smiles, tight, and thinks of the luggages stuffed ready under his bed.)





	1. of tender youth, and the sweetest of cherries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title is a quote from great gatsby (a little nod to the conceptual theme of time!)  
> this is a 6 + epilogue story i'm gonna push myself to write bc i've never done multi-chaptered before heh
> 
> also i'm mildly conversational in chinese so sicheng addresses his parents in mandarin only Once tbh, but just in case:  
> 爸爸/爸 means father/dad  
> 妈妈/妈 means mother/mum  
> and in return they call him "băobeì" 宝贝 which is a term of endearment for children that basically means treasure/precious!
> 
> also literally no one asked, but a fitting soundtrack for this chapter:  
> okinawa by 92914  
> oblivion by bastille  
> paris 12 by linying

**1880; Jung-Gu, Incheon, South Korea**

He doesn’t understand at first why they move from WenZhou to this new city. The cobbled streets are damp and slick with moss that make him trip, and the buildings tower intimidatingly over him in every colour of the rainbow, it’s too many colours, too different from the muted grayscales of his home. His friends all waved goodbye to him, and Sicheng thinks bitterly that his penmanship won’t guarantee a legible letter back.

Sicheng crosses his arms across his white tunic, pouts, stomps, but his parents smile at him with promise in their eyes (宝贝, you’ll love it there!). They said something about more opportunities, something about a thriving tea business, and lumped in the prospects of new friends, a new house. 

Sicheng lights up at that, until he walks the streets of Jung-Gu, and everything is a foreign murmur to his ears. Children chatter in a language unbeknownst to him, and it feels like they are a closed circuit of intimacy with him standing on the outskirts, peering in to no avail. Months later, his enrollment into school helps, but few classmates want to spend time limping through language with a stuttering Chinese boy who mispronounces and stumbles over his words. He is 8 years old, and feels the cruel sting of loneliness. And so Sicheng is left with no company but himself, and sits on the shophouse steps telling stories in his native dialect to empty air, wanders the streets with a single snow cone clutched in his hand, watching as the other kids play kickball and elaborate running games.

-

Isolation becomes a constant companion, which is why when a boy plops down in the seat next to him with a grunt, and shoves a green melon bun in front of his face, Sicheng blinks in confusion. The boy blinks back, and his eyes are big and starry, they overwhelm his small face. Sicheng feels his ears grow hot, and the boy shoves the melon bun into Sicheng’s hands.

“Hi! I’m Taeyong. I’m one of your neighbours from down the street and my mum baked melon buns today, and I reckoned you’d be out here ‘cos you’re always here by yourself!” Taeyong smiles, and the crinkle of his nose and chubbiness of his cheeks make Sicheng giggle in response. He pulls on the string on his gat shyly, and he splutters as it slips into his eyes. He looks up to meet eyes that curve into crescents of laughter.

“Hi Taeyong, I’m Sicheng,” he manages between the red hot of blush, and Taeyong nods wisely.

“That’s a cool name.” He stretches out a palm, solemn look on his face and a serious purse of his lips, “Sicheng, we’re gonna be friends.” And Sicheng grips his hand, and beams.

-

**(1890; Jung-Gu, Incheon, South Korea)**

“You shouldn’t be here,” Sicheng whispers, leaning out of precarious window to look at a man in a moonlit street. The breeze rustles his hair, and Taeyong launches another pebble at his flowerbed. “Enough! Enough, I’m coming, I’m coming.” Sicheng yanks on a overcoat, ties the drawstring of his pants tighter, and clambours down the steps in his straw slippers.

When he opens the door, Taeyong shoots him a blinding smile, and holds out a cloth bag. “C’mon, I discovered something the other day in the old barn near the outskirts of town.”

Sicheng shoots him a withering look, but Taeyong beats it away with a wave of his hand and a casual squeeze of his shoulder. And Taeyong’s happiness radiates off him so strongly that Sicheng finds himself giggling in excitement as they trip through the town at night, because they are 18 and so full of life that every experience is intoxicating.

“Close your eyes,” and there is a rustle, a soft chirping sound that breaks into the night, and then there is a ball of warmth in fluffy feathers pressing comfortable into his hands. Sicheng opens his eyes to see a baby chick, nestled in his palms and cooing softly, and he laughs - loud and clear and bursting with joy, and Taeyong is staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Taeyong turns away quickly, gathering more baby chicks in his arms, soft yellows against the navy tunic.

“They’re cute, right? I found them near a river next to this barn, cold and almost drowned. I’ve been coming back every two days to feed them,” and Taeyong looks up with the softest grin as he gestures at the small blankets littering the floor, and the scattering of lettuce and bread. It’s beautifully intimate for a moment, and Sicheng feels almost suspended in time, his heart jolted for a moment as he stares at Taeyong’s delicate smile, the tip of Taeyong’s nose at it crinkles.

They sit cross-legged, careful hands feeding water to the chicks, and Sicheng leans back into the hay, happiness dancing a playful strum across his body. Taeyong catches his eye, and lies down next to him, arm propping his head up as he grins. Sicheng opens one eye, and catches Taeyong’s line of sight flicker, just for a second, to his lips. He props himself up, and Taeyong’s looking at him like he has the entirety of the night sky etched into his eyes, and Sicheng blushes under the intensity of the gaze. Taeyong's lips are the colour of ripe cherries.

One of them leans in, and it is in this abandoned warehouse in the illumination of moonlight that Sicheng tastes a man’s lips on his own. Taeyong’s lips are slightly tinged with the coldness of the night, but there is an eagerness lingering in the breaths they take. His lips are supple, and soft, and they mold together with a familiarity that speaks of a decade of companionship. But this is new, and it makes something flutter in the pits of Sicheng’s stomach.

In the back of his mind, he thinks vaguely that this is wrong, that boys shouldn’t be kissing boys and he imagines the pointed fingers and the outcry of the town. But in the safety of the barn, Sicheng sucks in a breath, and laces his fingers into Taeyong’s, foreheads pressed together and giddy with joy.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” and there should be a coil of wrongness in Taeyong’s voice, but Sicheng hears nothing but endearment lacing a finally actualised dream. So he leans forward, and kisses him again.

-

They steal away little moments throughout the days, ducking into alleys to press a peck to cheeks, brushing knuckles under street lamps, eating melon buns close in the privacy of their rooms. It’s a bit unconventional to the public eye at first, but they’ve always been close, always just been the two of them wandering around town, so the talk dies down and is limited to soft murmurings. It’s comfortable, it’s soft, and Sicheng has never been happier breathing in the cotton scents he knows as a home.

It’s funny how short the peace lasts. They’re tucked into the corner of Taeyong’s living room, rubbing circles into their enclosed hands and giggling softly. Taeyong’s reading him a novel he got from the latest trade fair, and Sicheng hums alongside the narrative of adventurous friendship. The rattan of their chairs creak beneath them, and the traditional paintings on the wall cast an air of serenity over the amber of the setting sun. Taeyong looks down at him, face golden as the dusk sets his hair into a fiery halo of warmth, and Sicheng forgets to breathe for a moment.

“You’re beautiful, you know that, right?” He whispers.

Taeyong laughs in response, nuzzles his head closer, and their lips meet in unison as Sicheng smiles into the kiss. Taeyong tastes like cherries and bubbly happiness. He’s in the tender age of youth and he’s fallen so, so hard. 

The door slams open with the explosive force of a bullet, and Sicheng breaks away as his heart fills with lead and drops. He pulls away, lips still red, and Taeyong scrambles backwards on the couch awkwardly, one arm outstretched almost to shield them, protect them. Illuminated is Taeyong’s father standing framed in the rectangle of the doorway, military uniform starkly angular against the dusky light seeping in. Taeyong stumbles, and Sicheng senses the pure waves of panic rolling off him, because he reaches forward almost to comfort him but -

In a flash of movement, Sicheng is pushed from the chairs, and shoved against the wall, rattling the picture frames as his head slams back. A frame drops to the floor and shatters at their feet, and he hisses at the broken glass. His head rebounds off the wall, shaking, and his vision goes white and blind, and for a moment all he can hear is the ringing in his ears and Taeyong’s yells, but Commander Lee’s forearm is pressed against his chest and it’s taking all he can do to try and breath. Sicheng chokes, gasping, and his eyes sting with tears, flickering between the heaving commander - red faced, gelled hair falling into disarray, and Taeyong - pulling at his father’s arm, eyes convicted but powerless, and suddenly looking so painfully small.

“You. You stay away from my son,” and his growl is filled with the undercurrents of an explicit threat that Sicheng knows he can carry through. “You keep that - that - those - those diseased thoughts away from him, you freak. You stay away, or you’ll regret it.”

He rears back his fist, and Sicheng shuts his eyes before he hears another strangled scream, and feels the collision of a hardened fist against his cheekbone. He doubles over, blindness spreading in his vision, but before he crumples to the floor he is dragged roughly by his shoulders to the doorway. He peers through the pain at Taeyong’s father, cruelty marking the lines of his face, and disgust curling on the edges of his lip as he wipes the blood splattered on his uniform, hardened eyes flashing with the coldness of anger. 

“Don’t come back.” 

Sicheng stumbles out of the house, blood dripping down his swelling nose as his sight blurs, and he takes a chance, he turns around, just once. Taeyong is cornered in the room, eyes searching, as his father stands over him, taller and more imposing than they could’ve ever been, belt gripped hard and fast in his striking hand. He can’t hear anything anymore, but he knows the fear in Taeyong’s eyes like the back of his hand. He’s seen it in his nightmares.

A crack of leather resounds into the dusk, beats into the streets, and Sicheng flinches, pulls his coat tighter when hot tears lick stings into his open cuts.

-

It is no surprise that the next day, the town whispers like wildfire when he steps out of the shophouse. He’s a disease that’ll contaminate, that’ll spread, and mothers who used to smile at his politeness and offer empty seats to taste newest delicacies avert their eyes and steer their kids away. The elders who sit at the forefront of the grimy steps eye him with distaste and disgust, waving their paper fans in the air like he’s a pesky fruit fly. Children who play jump rope in the streets stumble over the flying rubber when he walks past, barely contained mutters furiously rising through the parapets like a haze.

Sicheng ducks his head, stares hard at the cobblestone and wills his feet to go faster. 

His only consolation is that Taeyong’s name is clear, is clean. It is expected, of course, that Commander Lee takes his power and shields his only son, instead pushing Sicheng out into the open, to the claws of the wolves to be ripped apart. It hurts, to walk in streets that are no longer familiar to him, that no longer feel like home when he doesn’t have a hand entwined in his.

His parents look at him with disappointment, with piteous glances flooding their faces. Tea is splashed on their front door with a mocking outcry, hammering fists and rude voices calling for Sicheng. His father holds his head in his hands when the military officials return their packages with a sneer on their noses and a offer to discipline abnormality. His mother receives the smallest eggs, the toughest pork, the riddled bokchoy that lay at the bottom of the sellers’ carts and the tittering disdain from the neighbours.

He sees Taeyong in the glimpses from his window, a lean tall figure being marched from school to home, purple bruises surely tucked under a gleaming vest. Taeyong turns to look up, and their eyes meet, and Taeyong opens his mouth as if to say something, his eyes shining, before a hand claps onto his back, and pushes him along.

His mother leans against the door, watching him, and a glimmer of understanding flashes across her face, before she edges towards him a plate of sliced melon. She whispers that Taeyong is being sent away, to Seoul, within the week, through his father’s endless connections, and he bites his lip hard. Somehow, this whisper hurts more than any talk of the town.

-

Dinnertimes are now always quiet, the silence stretching between them curling thick in the air, filled with unspeakable conversations and averted gaze. He is sitting cross-legged on the rattan mat, picking at the spiced chicken feet, when his father clears his throat with a gruff cough.

“Sicheng-ah, I don’t -,” his father pauses, deliberates, before continuing in Mandarin. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand - what - what happened. Or why it happened, for that matter. But - I just want you to know that - life in this town will be hard, and I know that you know this. I just - I don’t want -” his father stumbles a bit, unable to find the words to say, and his mother places a comforting palm on his father’s, her eyes wet. 

“What your father wants to say, is that we believe that you could be much happier somewhere else. This town isn’t a home anymore for you, and - and we will never understand, but please know we love you. Take these,” and she pushes into his hands an ornamental jade necklace, lifts up a basket lined with his grandmother’s fine porcelain. “Find happiness someplace else, 宝贝.”

“爸, 妈 -” He chokes.

His mother breaks into an open sob, turning into his father’s shoulder, her hands clutching at the washcloth. And Sicheng moves closer, until his arms are around them both, and they sink to the floor as a single organism, shaking with something raw, something hysterical, and something so so sad inside.

-

He sits on the back of a wooden rickshaw, cloth bags tucked at his feet and his warmest coat hanging on his back. A jade necklace dangles between his collarbones, and his eyes don’t leave the figures of his parents, standing just outside the frame of their front door, the pale yellows of dawn creeping into their faces, shining across their wrinkled eyes. They look fragile, small, quiet. But Sicheng can see the way his mother grasps at his father, the way his hand stills on the small of her back - holding each other closer in the absence of their son. 

He raises his hand in goodbye, and the lingering kiss on his cheek was wet with tears, and he clutches the pendant around his neck like a lifeline long after his parents became unrecognizable figures that disappeared from sight, and home became nothing more than a faraway town atop indistinguishable cobblestone.

He thinks of the barn, and how the chicks had all wandered away in search of something different, or something more, in the days of neglect. He thinks of a single letter, painstakingly written in his best penmanship, stashed with a melon bun into the nest of blankets with a single prayer to be found by a boy who had eyes like the night sky. Sicheng sighs, his heart itchy once more, and the rickshaw rattles him a lullaby into a dreamless sleep.


	2. of wide-eyed wonders, and steaming pork buns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its yuta!!! this chapter is kind of dramatic heh but lots of loveliness because what else could yuwin be right?  
> cameos by joy/sooyoung and seulgi of red velvet! and an fisherman called Old Park who i made up  
> this chapter is way longer than the first one smh,,, there was a lot to work with!
> 
> soundtrack:  
> it was enough by blind pilot  
> nothing arrived (live in london) by villagers  
> the call by regina spektor

**1902; Busan, South Korea**

The streets are wider, the people are noisier, and colourful signs adorn every shopfront - big words splashed across a strikingly bold font. Busan feels imposing, city slick, and he doesn’t like it as much, because when he talks, the older ladies prickles their ears and turn their noses because he sounds so different. 

Everything Sicheng does makes him feel like he stands out like a sore thumb, in the roughness of his linen shirts, his beaten leather soles, his hair scratching into the nape of his neck. At first he works at a tailor’s shop, hunched over bunching fabrics and scrunching his eyes, pricking his fingers on needles so fine that he almost goes mad at the pristine-ness of it all. He spends the first 8 years measuring cobalt blues, cutting emeralds and bowing at the constant line of well dressed, well paying customers that wave him other with the click of shiny dark dress shoes.

Eventually he gets used to the bustle of life in Busan, in a different way, when he retreats into the salty air of the docks and the port. The thrill of life here comes in form of cold dips of water and rainbow shiny fish and the glaring company of a friendly sun upon a rocking boat, weathered blue paint. He spends his days rushing down to the harbour at the crack of dawn to accompany Old Man Park with the hauling of nets, and the inevitable fishing journey. It pays less, but here he has no nitpicking boss who instructs him to repin the suit, or clients who hold barely concealed arrogance in their gaze. 

Here, he is by the sea in its blue vastness. Here, he likes talking to the fishermen of Busan, who live life simply, lulled only by the crashing of waves against the dock and the beating seabreeze on their ruddied reddened cheeks. When night stretches on, he balances precariously on top of a bucket, the smells of roasted crayfish wafting upwards, and laughs all the way down to his stomach with the rest of them. In the early mornings, everyone gathers with a steaming mug of something hot clutched in red hands, and blink sleep from their eyes as they load the boats with nets and cages to prepare for the journey outwards.

Sicheng is rocked by the waves, nail idling scratching away at the chipping paint of Old Parks’ boat, sunlight beating down on his face. The older man takes out a stump of a cigarette, lighting it, resting it between his gnarled lips and sucking in smoke with an exaggerated pop. He grunts in delight, before reaching for another, and offering it to Sicheng. 

“Winwin.” Sicheng nods at the nickname, given to him affectionately by the fishermen for his extraordinary luck the first time he hauled out and returned breaking 300 count. They clapped his shoulder with rough palms and powerfully aged biceps, and poured him a spluttering cup of soju - for special occasions, they said, cheers floating through the late afternoon bay.

“No thanks, I’m alright. Don’t like smokes.”

“Who hurt you?” Old Park barks a laugh, full bellied and hearty. “What’s wrong with these?”

“I just don’t like them too much. Not too hot on ‘em.” (Sicheng doesn’t say this, but he thinks of the curling waft of bitterness, the tangy drift of alcohol that lined the spat words of Taeyong’s father. Underneath the terror of fear, as the man pushed his forearm into his chest, so many years ago, Sicheng never forgets the hiss of smoke and whiskey that crept into his nostrils and paralysed him.)

Something steely flashes in his eyes for a moment, a hardened memory, and maybe Old Park recognises the glint, because he sucks hard on his cigar, gruffly looking back at the rippling sea. “Well, it’s your loss, boy.”

Later, as he’s patting the nets down back at the harbour and wiping sweat from the sheen of his brow bone, Old Park sidles up to him, and presses a hot loaf of wheat bread into his palm.

“My wife baked some today. There’s extras - take it.” Park scratches the back of his neck, fiddles the straw on his hat. “It’s not the best, it’s a little hard, but you need the food ‘cos you’re so skinny and so small.”

Sicheng looks over, at the tumultuous figure he’s come to recognise as some sort of uncle, heart warm. “Thanks.”

The older man chuckles, rumbles deep. “Don’t mention it. Say, how old are you again?”

“I’m turning 30 this year.”

Old Park looks at him for a moment in silence, eyes wide as saucers in disbelief, before his laughter booms out. “Winwin-ah,” he titters, gnarled finger wagging, “you can’t fool this old man. You’re not a day past 20.” And he laughs again.

Sicheng doesn’t laugh. He frowns, and his fingers close tight around the loaf of bread, stilled.

-

He goes home to the second storey apartment he’s begun to call home, and peers into the cracking, grimy mirror. Fingers his hair, and searches for a flash of silver or white hidden amongst the masses of black. He pulls at his face, stretches his skin, looking for wrinkles that are supposed to line the edges of his eyes, his mouth. He comes up empty, and he dry heaves into the sink.

He looks up at himself, eyes red and raw in the mirror, and wipes the spit on his chin. It becomes a routine for the next eight years, searching for something that’ll never appear, and everyday his blood runs cold until he straightens, and sets forth into a new morning with the threat of foreverness pulsing in the back of his mind.

-

**(1910; Busan, South Korea)**

The Japanese Annexation of Korea means several things. 

The first is that there are now foreign fishermen who cast their nets with smug entitlement, who rev their engines and cut through the ocean with aggressive vigour. Old Park curses under his breath when they spot the tell-tale pearly white in the distance, and the nights at the harbour consist of rugged hands and whispered complaints, because everyone is angry, but everyone is also too afraid to toe the line of rebellion. 

The second is that there’s a constant influx of newer, younger Japanese soldiers who pour into the port before heading inland towards the rest of the country. They intimidate Sicheng, with their shiny medallions and harsh buckles, the muted green of their uniform that smell of gunpowder and drift smoke in their wake. He ducks into another street whenever he spies a procession march their way down, boots clicking in unison, stomping the seaside town into disarray. He watches his neighbours smear their daughters’ faces with grubby charcoal, and hack their hair like shorn sheep, and prays quietly from his apartment window whenever he sees a sundressed woman pitter across the street at night, quiet fright spreading like the soot in the sky.

The third is that Sicheng now takes up another job at a local tea parlour, because the meagre earnings from the fishing trips now no longer fetch enough to keep him afloat, barely even covering the apartment’s rent. Dawn to late afternoons are spent at sea, and the nights are now dedicated to serving porcelain cups brimming with brewed tea and brushing off advances from males and females alike. The hot steam that rise from the trays every night make him think of home, of his father’s simple kindness. It’s not so bad working at the tea parlour, even though he misses with resolute fondness the booming laughter and traded stories told over firelight at the docks. Still, he balances another tray in his hands, and pushes forward.

There’s a soldier sitting at the corner table again, ducked over his steaming cup, a single hand clutching a worn paperback novel. Soft hair falls into his eyes at seemingly standardised intervals, and he would blink, blow it away, and return to the lines of his book. He’s a regular customer, mostly quiet except for the low utterances of his tea orders, a faint aura of unnerving peacefulness radiating him as the weeks wear on. But the first time the soldier entered, all copper medals and harsh accents, the occupants unconsciously straightened their backs, fear prickling the air like an electrical charge, and Sicheng’s hands shook as he poured tea. He feared the worst that day as he bowed hastily and scrambled away, but the soldier just nodded at Sicheng with a polite tip of his cap, and when the soldier raises his hand, Sicheng is relieved when it is just to request for extra sugarcubes. Today, the afternoon sun breaks into the parlour with a careful sweep of the beaded curtains and Sicheng looks up with a small grin as the soldier ducks into the store.

Something about the soldier’s curving lips and broad smile makes a butterfly of a pendulum drum against the walls of his stomach, coiling, taking root, and he doesn’t need to peer into a mirror to know that his ears have turned red. 

The soldier catches his blush with a twinkling eye, and chuckles.

-

He’s closing up the shop alone one night, sweeping the wooden floorboards with a scratchy broom, humming softly, when the curtains are ripped aside with a clatter, beads bashing against the wooden frame. In the wake of its swinging violence is a young woman huffing under the weight of a fallen uniformed man. There is a splattering of blood decorated across her sundress, and her cheeks are streaked with tears, and her eyes are ragged. The man groans.

“Help, help,” she rasps, her voice raw. “Help him, please.”

Sicheng freezes for a second before he launches into motion, pushing two tables together and rushing to her side to prop up the collapsed man. He rolls the dead weight over with a grunt, and he peers in shock at the face of the soldier. The discomfort of familiarity creeps into his system, and he turns away to busy his hands with the washcloth, warm water swirling circles of bloody red. He dabs gently at the long, jagged slice in the soldier’s torso, and there is a hiss of a response.

“What happened?”

“I was going down Yeongu-gil street, I was on the way home, when a group of soldiers stopped me and asked if I had a permit to walk around so late, and they threatened to take me to camp and arrest me, and - and - they tried to - they almost - “ Sicheng looks at the tearing rip on the sleeve of her dress, the mud crusted on its hem. She looks up at him with a tear stained face, her eyes big and black under the store’s fluorescent lights, and Sicheng knows what the story would have amounted to. 

“This man stopped them. He came out of another alley, asked what they were doing, and they laughed at first, before asking if he wanted to join, and I tried to cry out for help.” She sobs into her hands, quiet hiccups, and Sicheng takes out a tiny needle, and threads it with a fine string.

“He tried to reason with them first, but they got angry. When he tried to lead me away, they stabbed him, I think, with a - with a bayonet, but I couldn’t tell because everything was happening so fast.”

The needle breaks the surface of skin, and the soldier’s jaw clenches. Sicheng tells himself that he’s sewing the inseams of a tailored shirt, and he stitches neat little rows across the wound. Each press is punctuated with a groan of pain, and Sicheng murmurs soft assurances that bubble into incoherence.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know where else to bring him until I saw your light was still on. They ran away when they saw his nametag.” She babbles a bit, her hands hysterical flickers in the air. She rolls the gauze in her hands and bites her lip, and Sicheng senses the dawning of another panic attack.

“And what’s your name?” 

“I’m Sooyoung. Ah, ah, sorry, I’m such a mess, let me help you with that.” She takes the wash cloth and dabs at the leaking droplets of blood, presses at the tender red of the wound with delicate fingers. Sicheng ties the thread with finality, and wipes the sweat from his palms, looking down at the tiny stitches adorning the soldier’s torso.

“I’m Sicheng. And I can’t leave him here. This is a tea parlour, and my boss will be back at dawn tomorrow.” Sooyoung looks up, concern creasing her brows.

“I can’t take him to my house. My father will throw him out for certain.” Sooyoung smiles apologetically, and later they huff together as they climb the steep steps to his apartment with a deadweight swinging between them. She pens her address down - find me if you need help - neat strokes of black against a discarded sheaf of paper, and hurries home, sundress flying under the streetlights. Sicheng sighs, and remembers bitterly that the lacklustre couch into his bedroom is scarcely habitable.

-

There is a groan coming from the bed, and Sicheng looks up from his chopped spinach to see sunlight flickering onto the soldier’s flopping hair, mud and blood caked into his nails, his torso bound with a yellowing white gauze.

“Oh! You’re up earlier than I expected. Yuta, right?” He pauses, and the man nods. “I’m Sicheng from the tea parlour.” Yuta sits up, props his body up with his elbows, and squints, confusion marrying his face.

“The washbasin’s to your right, by the way. You look pretty grimy, and there’s some spare clothes on the stool.” He hears a muffled thanks, and watches Yuta shuffle to the sink, a single hand clamped tightly over his torso, shaking slightly.

They sit on two rickety stools, a grocer’s box propped up between them as a makeshift table as Sicheng scoops out two bowls of fish porridge and spinach dumplings. Yuta sends him a grateful smile and a gentle nod of his head, before they eat in comfortable silence.

“I think I was going in and out of consciousness last night, so I can’t remember much. But thank you for your hospitality, Sicheng.” Yuta peers at him with sincere eyes, and Sicheng shoots him a grin, it’s no problem, really.

Sooyoung stops by the house late in the afternoon, wearing a tunic and loose pants, her hair tucked into a page boy’s cap. Another girl stands by her side, wearing the faintest expression of unease on her face, her hand curved loosely in Sooyoung’s, protective. Her eyes burn into him, sharp and guarded, and Sicheng learns later that this is Seulgi. But Sooyoung’s smile is bright when she sees Sicheng, and she hugs him softly, before turning to Yuta and bowing in utmost reverence.

“Thank you so, so much for stepping in last night. I’m so sorry this happened.” She chokes a bit, continuing at Seulgi’s encouraging nod. “I brought some medicinal herbs from a store that Seulgi’s dad runs that might help with the recovery, and some sweet pork buns. I can come back every few days with food, I’m indebted to you both.” She bows again, hat flopping.

“It’s fine, honestly. Any individual who saw what was happening would’ve stepped in. Don’t bow so much.” Yuta grins, and Sooyoung looks up at him with shiny tears dotting her lashes. 

Sicheng bites off the top of a steaming bun, tongue burning regretfully, and Seulgi looks at him with amusement in her eyes before she drags Sooyoung away to tend to the store. Gratefulness sprinkles itself on Yuta’s smile, and the pleasant smell of herbal medicine wafts into the air. It is the sunlit beginning of many days to come.

-

Yuta comes over even when his torso only bears the faintest remnants of neat stitches, and he can already double over laughing without wincing in the initial burst of pain, and Sicheng is grateful for the company. 

Yuta follows him down to the docks and Old Park eyes him beadily before they learn that Yuta navigates the waters with a responsible confidence to the greatest hauls, and then Yuta becomes another back for Old Park to clap his hand on and laugh heartily. Sicheng likes the way the fishermen open up the circle to Yuta, the way he smiles a response so open and free that it spreads like comfort above the crackling fire. When Yuta hears the fishermen call out ‘Winwin-ah’, he squeals in delight and presses their cheeks together, loud voice carrying over the din of the morning rush, exclaiming how precious everything was. Sometimes the constant chatter becomes slightly overwhelming, but Yuta becomes a pleasant presence by his side, so subtly that he blinks in surprise sometimes.

It happens ever so slowly, too, with Yuta bringing stalks of pretty flowers he sees at the grocers and placing them in scattered assortments of jars and old tins in his apartment, or leaving familiar black boots traced with mud outside the doorstep, or meticulously folding unfamiliar linen shirts neatly pressed into his dresser drawer. And Sicheng barely notices, until he’s scrubbing at his face with lather and smells the faint powdery citrus that Yuta used so often, and finds another toothbrush sitting next to his, innocent on the edge of his sink.

Yuta comes bounding in that night with an armful of mushrooms and crabmeat and rice cakes, a certain brightness on his face, and Sicheng smiles to himself as he watches the man hum over the hotpot, singing softly as he stirs the stew.

When they sit in a coffeehouse all together, Seulgi glances at Yuta’s wandering hands and touching affection with a knowing raise of an eyebrow, and looking at Yuta’s hand resting imperceptibly naturally on his forearm, Sicheng feels his heart warm in a way he hasn’t felt for a long time.

-

Yuta is waiting outside the tea parlour with a ratty duffel bag in his hands and a blanket in the other, brightening when he spies Sicheng patter down the steps and whisk off his green apron.

“Winwin-ah, remember when you told me about your autumn festival?” And Sicheng recalls in the back of his mind, one lazy afternoon sprawled out on his worn couch mentioning something about 中秋节; mooncakes and lanterns, and he nods happily. Relief flashes across Yuta’s face, and he stifles a giggle at the comicality.

Old Park frowns amusedly at them pulling the blue boat out the dock, and Sicheng calls back a flimsy excuse about late night fishing, and Old Park dismisses them with a tired wave of his hand. They row out into the darkness, till there’s no harbour and the rippling sea water was bright with reflected moonlight, the quiet lights of the town humming in the distance. The waves rock the boat, and they sway in tandem with the deep blue. A kerosene lamp flickers orange between them, but it is a cool night, and he shivers.

“Cold?” 

“Just a bit. I’m fine, honestly.” Sicheng wraps his coat around himself, rubs his hands together. “Why’d you bring me out here, anyway?”

“I’ve got a surprise for you. Hang on.” And Yuta reaches into the duffel bag at their feet, and pulls out two neatly wrapped sets of steaming pork buns, and a single mooncake. Sicheng gasps in delight, and even under the darkness of night and the weakening lamp, a blush blooms noticeably across Yuta’s cheeks.  
“I’d thought you’d want to celebrate mid-autumn festival, but I wanted it to be special and not like normal meals at your apartment.”

Sicheng lets his smile speak for him, beaming, and watches Yuta’s face colour itself again. They bite into the buns, warmth filling their palms and stomachs, and nibble at the blossoming sweetness of the lotus mooncake. It’s a delicacy, especially during hard times, and Sicheng doesn’t want to imagine the lengths Yuta went to just to procure this little treat. He looks up at the constellations dotting the sky overhead, sending up prayers of gratitude to the fates for aligning in the manner they have.

There’s a crackle of fire, and he looks over to see a paper lantern shining in Yuta’s hands. It is golden and bulbous, and the lantern’s flame flickers amber across their faces.

“It’s not much to look at, I know. I couldn’t find many stores around Busan that sold Chinese festival lanterns, so I made this out of rice paper instead.” Sicheng spies the messy overlay of paper decorating the diameter of the lantern, the crooked linear of the metal wire. Yuta’s eyes are shining with sincerity, speckled with golden light, and Sicheng feels a familiar sensation of warmth envelop his heart.

“It’s beautiful. I love it.”

They release the lantern into the sky together, a miniscule sun amidst the navy of night, and with his heartbeat thrumming a tumultuous rhythm, Sicheng presses his lips to Yuta’s like a long awaited crescendo. Yuta kisses back with the lingering taste of lotus, and a curving smile eating into his face. In this moment, his heart is inexplicably full, and he is content in forgetting the curse of his immortality, instead just choosing to feel the presence and blooming affection of the man sitting beside him.

The lantern rises into the sky, like a wayward balloon of light, and Sicheng leans into warm arms as the boat drifts to the melody of Yuta’s familiar humming, dancing softly into the night.

-

“Can I draw you?” Yuta is folded into the chair that is perched by his window, ricketty wood creaking under his weight, yellowy paper stretched out in front of him and a piece of charcoal hovering in his hand.

Sicheng steps out of the washroom, his threadbare white shirt sticking to his wet frame. His cheeks colour themselves red involuntarily. He picks up a towel draped over the back of a chair and scratches the back of his neck.

“Sure - Sure. Um, now?” Yuta shrugs in response and gestures for Sicheng to sit in front of him, illuminated by the falling rays of dusky sun. There’s many things he should be doing beyond this, but the way Yuta smiles at him is enough to make up his mind, and he sits cross-legged beside the mandarin potted plants, and he watches the sun set as Yuta makes soft strokes on his canvas.

His nose gets itchy about an hour in, and he sniffs. Yuta makes a small noise in the back of his throat, and Sicheng feels his legs numbing beneath him, feels the tingling offset of pins and needles, and grumbles lightly.

“Ah, ah, wait, wait.” He hears the anxious undertone, and he stills, lets the drifting dust tickle his nose for a moment longer. After a few minutes, the scratch of charcoal ceases, and Sicheng stretches out long limbs, stands up to peer over Yuta’s shoulder.

His breath catches in his throat, and Yuta looks up at him with that twinkle in his eyes. The contours of his face shine back at him, and he feels as if the charcoal captured his essence, an emotion that bleeds through the paper. The portrait is painstakingly intricate, and for a moment time suspends and feels tenuous, sacred, as if he’d stumbled on something so intimately beautiful that wasn’t supposed to be shared. He doesn't know exactly when he fully fell in love, because it crept up on him, slowly, the same way Yuta subtly and swiftly entered his life and made everything just a little brighter.

“Yuta, you’re wonderful.” He wraps his arms tight and kisses Yuta’s cheek hard, giddy with happiness, and the lilting cadence of their joy lifts into the darkness. He nuzzles his head into the crooks of Yuta’s shoulder, and laughs at the beauty of life, however temporal.

Sooyoung and Seulgi coo over the portrait the following morning, eyes alight, and Sicheng feels Yuta’s hand wind its way into his, pleasant against the drumming of his heartbeat, feels a wave of contentedness wash over them all.

-

“I’m being relocated soon.” Yuta’s voice is light, but heavy with an underlying sadness. Sicheng gulps, and his tea feels cold, sloshing down his throat uncomfortably. “I’m being sent back to Japan.”

“Ah. Oh.”

“I was - I was thinking, that maybe you’d want, want to come with me.” But when Sicheng’s eyes rise to meet Yuta’s with a fleeting look of a deer in headlights, Yuta’s mind scrambles. “I just thought maybe you’d like Japan, it’s really beautiful, I promise, and I think you’d love the cherry blossoms. We could get a house in the edge of the city, or near the apple fields, if you want. We can make a living there, together. Grow old.” 

There’s a roll of thunderstorms that beat into his chest as Yuta looks at him with the world of promises in his eyes, and Sicheng can’t bring himself to face the hopefulness breaking across his lover’s face, so he leans forward to kiss Yuta instead. Yuta’s eyes close and his hands trail Sicheng’s hair with soft fingertips, but Sicheng feels tears sting the back of his throat. There is a bitterness in his lips.

He remembers in the back of his mind that Yuta is only 22, and the vastness of his entire life lay ahead of him, and here Sicheng was stealing away the wonders of his youth like a thief in the moonlit nighttime. A coil of disgust rises in his gut, makes him open his eyes into the kiss and stare at the sincerity of love painted across Yuta’s face. He would’ve been turning 39 soon. The ache deep in his bones telling of eternity marrs the sacredness of their vigil. Sicheng is selfish. He is so so selfish. 

“I’m sorry,” Sicheng ducks away, heart beating louder than Yuta’s soundless sadness, “I can’t do that.”

“I just thought -” Yuta doesn’t finish his sentence. There is a heaviness in the slope of his shoulders, a phantom of regret passing over his face. The pressing quiet that surrounds them is new. Yuta’s head into his hands, staring at nothing as Sicheng glances overhead, at anything but the man in front of him.

“I’m sorry.” He says again, and watches Yuta’s back heave slightly, shaking. 

After that, Sicheng is silent. Lets the hotness of his breath eat into the emptiness. In the distance, the velvet cacophony of music starts up, muffled suffocating chords drifting into their open window. 

-

Yuta doesn’t drop by for days after that, and Sooyoung swirls the cup in her hand with a crease of her eyebrows as she watches the eyebags darken vulnerably on Sicheng’s sinking face.

“You couldn’t have broken it off any worse than you did.” She sniffs, and Seulgi puts her chopsticks down with a deafening clatter. Seulgi doesn’t say a word, but the disappointment hangs thick and unfurling overhead like a noose around his neck.

“I always thought you were a different kind of person,” Sooyoung sighs. “He’s leaving this afternoon.” Sicheng raises his head, something flickering in his eyes, and Seulgi pierces him with a look.

“The boat’s docked at the harbour. He’s on his way there now.” There’s something careful in Seulgi’s voice, a tentativeness that bleeds over her words, as if the cadence was carrying delicate porcelain. “You owe him. He doesn’t deserve this. Go.”

The disjointedness of her speech strikes a chord in him, and his chair rattles backwards, startled almost at the suddenness of his movement, as Sicheng grabs his coat, rushes out of the coffeehouse, hair whipping in the wind.

When he sees Yuta, green uniform crisp and stiff, medals shining under the glittering sun, and suddenly right in front of him, and so so real, he can’t seem to breathe for a moment, can’t seem to find the words in his mouth that he ran over countless times on the journey to the harbour. Everything feels so foreign, so blinding, that Sicheng stumbles over all the things he wants to say. Yuta stares at him, and there is a pained smile on Yuta’s face, that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Thank you so much for everything, and I’m sorry that I can’t go with you.” He presses a cup of jasmine tea, two extra sugar cubes into Yuta’s hands. Fingers curl around the cup, and Sicheng catches a small smile grace his face. And then he holds out the charcoal sketch of himself, head bowed. There is a beat of silence.

“You keep it. You’ll always be with me. My torso’s got neat little stitches to prove it, love.” Yuta’s laugh holds no weight, but Yuta looks at him with understanding in his eyes and a promise of well wishes in the future ahead. The unsaid goodbye hovers between them like a blanket of bittersweet joy.

“Thank you.” Sicheng tries his best to put every emotion that churned in his chest into the simplicity of two words that speak volumes for him. 

Yuta leans forward, and pecks him soft on his cheek. There’s a familiar sparkle in the twinkle of his eye, and a lightness in his chuckle that Sicheng wants to remember forever.

“Don’t worry about me, Winwin-ah. You can’t live with regrets, right?”

Sicheng presses his face into Yuta’s shoulder, lets his tears drip steadily onto the green uniform, and breathes in the citrus soap that still lies in his apartment. The foghorn sounds, and Yuta breaks away, kindness in his face and the sunlight in his hair. Yuta waves, jogging onto the ship with his duffel bag bouncing, and Sicheng feels the weariness of eternity ache into his bones, his heart, for a moment, burning under the blinding brightness of Yuta’s smile.

He feels so selfish. Because how does he say goodbye to someone he’s been searching for for so long? He feels heartbreak etch itself into his chest, thinks bitterly of the easiness of laughter and warmth, and blinks until the pain of his reality becomes a convoluted mixture of shaking watercolours. The image of Yuta breaks into his ribs and steals his heart, and Sicheng feels a piece of himself drift away in the singular white of the boat that launched off the docks, gone. 

Eternity feels like a forever-ness of this emptiness. 

Old Park presses the warmth of a comforting hand on his back, but Sicheng still shivers in the wind, and when the explosive hum of a fishing boat disturbs the poignance of the silence, Sicheng turns away, and wipes at his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one ends on a greater sense of closure, yes? sicheng's still in the early years of his immortality, so he falls in love too easy and trips into heartbreak too fast. i tried to be historically accurate (i researched the japanese annexation of korea and the invention of toothbrushes and etc etc so many weird googles
> 
> leave your thoughts below, thanks so much for reading!


	3. (+1, no need to say goodbye)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a very very short chapter, no new characters, because it's meant to be a still in sicheng's life.  
> a little journey back to Jung-Gu, Incheon.
> 
> inspired because i listened to:  
> clair de lune by debussy

**(1915; Jung-Gu, Incheon, South Korea)**

His feet carry him forward, Yuta’s words echoing softly in the back of his mind. Do what you want to do, because life was too short for regret. Sicheng still doesn’t quite know why he’s back here, searching for some fleeting imitation of closure. The cobblestones have been replaced with cement, and for a moment Sicheng fiddles with the collar of his coat, wondering if he should pull it higher and hide his face, before he remembers that it’s been well over two decades, and no one would think twice about, or even recognise a slender young man who smelt like the sea.

He stops just outside his old home, knowing his parents have both passed years before, feeling an emptiness quakes its way through his lungs. He doesn’t know what compels him to take a fleeting look in - maybe the slight hope that something inside remained the same, but when he does, he almost trips over his feet, and his breath stills.

Inside lies a warmly lit room, cast into shades of orange and yellow of the sunniest variety, and there is a child, dressed in a cream jumper, bouncing and squealing as strongly built forearms lift him into the air. A familiar voice sounds out, _careful Jisung-ah_ , and Sicheng doesn’t believe his eyes when the man leans forwards to nuzzle the squealing child’s hair.

The man has wrinkles peppering his face, harsh lines that crinkle across his eyes as he smiles at the child, laughter creasing on his cheeks. His hair is slicked backwards, clean, some strands broken free of the gel and dusting his forehead as his head bounces in tandem. His hair is streaked with the faintest silvers of grey, and some sensible part of Sicheng reminds him that Taeyong is now in his mid 40s. Taeyong’s eyes are shining with such vigour at the child - so unlike, yet so similar to the drape of the night sky hanging over their heads, and -

Here’s the thing: to Sicheng, Taeyong is still so beautiful. Taeyong still holds the world in his smile, and maybe it is this painfulness realisation of Sicheng’s own eternal youngness that sparks something in hollow in him, because he involuntarily lets out a gasp, chokes on the air.

Taeyong turns, casualness lining his curiosity. And then Taeyong blinks like he’s seen a ghost, and perhaps he has, because Sicheng is standing outside his window, young and pretty as he ever remembered underneath the rays of silver moonlight. He is 18 for a second, breathless. The child on his lap turns around, wonderous at the intensity of emotion radiating off his father. Sicheng sees Taeyong’s mouth curve around recognisable syllables, and he can almost hear the force of the whisper. 

And in the moments where Taeyong places his child down gently, and rushes out the front door, Sicheng slips into an alley and blinks away the tears from his eyes. He steadies himself, and chances just one look back, and sees Taeyong standing alone in the streets, barefoot on the concrete, hair whipping in the breeze and something very painfully vulnerable painted across his broken face.

Taeyong stands there for many more minutes, but there is no confusion. Sicheng stays very still, heartache thrust into the shadows of his alley. Taeyong looks into the distance at something only his eyes can see, the angular planes of his face cast into stark contrast by the overhead street lights. A woman opens the front door, floral apron tucked prettily into her skirt, a tiny baby nestled on her hip. She calls out something uninterpretable, her face lined with concern, and the spell is broken as Taeyong turns to her, smile not reaching his eyes. 

With a shake of his head, Taeyong follows her back in, but he takes a single look back at the empty streets, searching for someone who only exists in his memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wanted some sense of continuity, and i was feeling sad listening to clair de lune (doesn't it remind you of a lonely yellow boat, drifting into the darkness of sea?) aaa angsty taewin.
> 
> the next proper chapter won't be posted till end november probably because i have finals coming up! ya girl needs to study  
> please leave a comment or a kudos, and thanks for reading!


	4. of guarded dimples, and a dull gold sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a monster of a chapter guys... it's longer than all three previous chapters coMBINED,, it's over 10k can u believe the power of jaewin? as expected of my '97 loves
> 
> this chapter is being released a lot earlier than expected because i actually still have my finals in a few days (oops) but i couldn't get this idea out of my head!! i shamelessly admit that i was imagining regular!era jaehyun in his magnificent suit the whole time.
> 
> a bunch of side characters include: doyoung!, f(x)'s victoria/songqian, gg's hyoyeon, pristin's kyulkyung/jie-qiong, and got7's jackson
> 
> soundtrack:  
> diet mountain dew by lana del ray  
> sadderdaze by the neighbourhood  
> slow dancing in the dark by joji

**1920; Hong Kong**

For many years, Korea feels too painful to stay in, when everything felt like a raw itch that tugged at his heart. He returned to Busan to sympathetic gazes, and every clatter of the beaded curtain made him look up expecting to see a mop of flopping hair and a sunlit smile, but he sees nothing but the passive flow of customers, thrust into the currents of life. The years pass in a blur, but that didn’t truly matter, until his surroundings were growing too old without him, leaving him behind in his youngness, and there’s an unsaid sinking in his heart. And so he hugged goodbye to his friends, straw hat dipping in the breeze, with a solemn knowledge that he can never meet them again, at least not in this lifetime. Sooyoung pressed a wrapped pork bun into his hands, with a promise to write, and Seulgi cuffs his shoulder, eyes wet. 

He takes a ferry to Hong Kong, where the language is familiar and the technicolour rush of life might be enough to drown out his sorrow. Everything in the city feels like a turbulent ride, spinning him so fast that the world blurred on its axis, and he embraces the hazy towering buildings and the narrow alleys bursting with sleazy crime and shoddy opulence alike. 

The apartment he rents when he first arrived he scarcely touches these days, not when every night he encounters women and men draped in luxury who shove their money at him for a smile, for a kiss. At first Sicheng prickles under their touch, their eagerness, but he grows accustomed to the grandeur of their luxury, and learns to like the glittering eyelids and suffocating colognes. The city women, sparkling under the lights, press themselves to him with wads of cash in their hands, and life as an overpaid escort is easy, fast money.

It happens by chance, actually. 

Sicheng was walking down the main street with his sharpest suit, awkwardly pressed pants, hearing the expensive clatter of leather shoes all around him and feeling as though if he let out a word, the passing city folk would sneer at the shabbiness of his being. He was ducking out the door of an tailorshop, the blush of humiliation burning on his cheeks, the memory of the man's condescension sneering at his worn loafers printed onto his pride. This is not some lowly establishment, the man spat as if Sicheng’s air of poverty brought with a stench that tainted the immaculate smell of money and mahogany in the store. You may have done well in _Busan_ , but this is _Hong Kong_ , boy. The customers looked at him through the corner of their eyes with interest, and a lady in red heels eyes him keenly, but he does not notice this as he makes a beeline to the door. 

It's not the first rejected employment, and Sicheng almost considers making a venture into another area of expertise apparently more fitting of his place - shoe shining, perhaps - when he hears the telltale click clack of expensive high heels, and a “Hey! Mister!”. He turns to see a well-dressed woman, slender under the mass of white furs, pretty face sporting startling red lipstick.

“I thought you’d never hear me,” she huffs, jewellery heavy hand wiping invisible sweat off her brow. “Have my business card. I manage a night bar down at Wan Chai district, and I think you’d do great as a staff or an escort there. You’re simply stunning, gorgeous, really.”

Sicheng looks down at the pristine white paper in his hands, embossed in golden words, the faint smell of lavender floating up, and the woman claps her hands expectantly. Her bangles jiggle and her gleaming watch catches the light.

“We are open tonight, so do drop by, dear! A single interview and we pay by the hour. There's a generous flow of tips, almost guaranteed.” She barely finishes her sentence, before the tailor steps out of the store, bowing slightly, smile tight as he beams, and his hands are clasped together.

“Ma'am, I'm so sorry this young man disturbed you, he's fresh in from the country and we've just rejected him, of course. Nobody but the best employed in our store. If you would follow me we can continue assessing the fit of your emerald blouse?”

The lady appraises him with cold eyes, and her chin lifts into the air as if she was balancing something precariously porcelain on it. “Excuse me, but I don’t recall requesting your presence out here, Mr Lim. I'm attending to business. This young man is perfectly employable.” The tailor’s moustache quivers slightly, before he nods falteringly and makes a hasty retreat into the store. She turns back to Sicheng, and there is a firmness and conviction sparkling in her eyes.

“Thank you, madam.” Sicheng blinks, bows.

“Oh I’m not that old, I’m scarcely 26!” Her head throws back, and Sicheng watches the line of her delicate throat as she laughs, painted nails covering her mouth. Her smile softens, and although her presence still retains an aura of intimidation, there is a kindness that lingers in the air.

“And no need to thank me. People should know how to address others with respect, regardless of circumstance. And call me Song Qian, dear, or you can just ask for Victoria when you get there.”

Sicheng stumbles into the velvets of jazz music, the hanging golden lights, and the stylists coo over his doe eyes, the drape of a sequin shirt on his vast shoulders, and Song Qian stands to the side, a proudness written on her face.

-

**1928; Hong Kong**

They only entertain the most elusive, exclusive of high end partygoers, all glimmering headpieces and arched eyebrows speckled with gemstones, magnificent satins and crisp cashmere wools. Their voices alone dripped with money. 

Tonight, Hyo-yeon is hanging by the crook of his elbow, the drape of her silver neckline low, her eyes half lidded and her fingers dancing a pattern across his hand, rings gleaming under the lights. He laughs at something trivial she says, and a pretty pink blush spreads across her cheeks.

“Come now, Sicheng. We've known each other, what, 3 years by now? I’ve got a long business trip coming up, and you still won't take my company?” Her voice teases, a playfulness between them. Sicheng takes her hands in his, and stares into her silver lined eyes with an intensity, an adoration he knows will get her heart racing, brushes his smooth thumb in small circles over her knuckles. He's always been a good actor.

“Hyo-yeon,” he pauses to kiss the back of her hand, and she leans forward breathlessly, eyelashes fluttering. “You know I can't do that to you.” She makes a noise at the back of her throat as if to intercept his words, and he presses a finger to her lips. She stills beneath his touch.

“You're a lovely, beautiful, amazing woman. Someone worthy of you is waiting out there, because I'm nothing more than an escort in this bar, and come morning the glittering beauty of the night will become brazen to your eyes.” Something inside him shrivels up slightly, and he wants to shudder at his own audacity, but Hyo-yeon’s knuckles are white and her eyes are reflecting watery imitations of the glowing lights above them.

“Oh, Sicheng. Oh - oh, Sicheng. That was - that was heartbreaking. But I understand. We could never be together,” she lets out a soft sob, before she blinks rapidly such that the silver adorning her eyelids won't smear. She sighs heavily, and looks down at their joined hands, and his thumb resumes tracing her knuckles.

“I just want you to have this, alright? I'll still come back to see you, a few months from now probably.” Hyo-yeon smiles at him, kindness in the deepness of her endless pockets, and removes a diamond necklace from the white curve of her neck. It is a heavy weight in the palm of his hand - telling of infatuation and naivety, but most significantly, of generosity. He kisses the soft of her cheek, and her eyelids flutter shut before her lips curve upwards. Remember me, her eyes seem to say.

“Hyo-yeon, how could I ever forget you?” She blinks fast again, and the silver gemstone under her eyes glimmers in tandem. She makes another soft noise, pained, and presses tightly puckered lips to each of his cheeks before tottering towards the exit, assistants trailing behind with confused looks thrown back at him.

Sicheng sighs, slumps back into his seat, collapses almost. He snatches a tall glass of bubbling champagne from a passing waiter and takes a careless sip, feeling the golden warmth slide down his throat. He smacks his lips.

He feels the telltale prickle at the back of his neck that there are eyes on him and he turns to left to see a man sitting in an armchair, illuminated only by the wavering amber of the lamp beside him, legs crossed. Sicheng squints, and the suit looks some variation of deep magenta in a rich velvet. The man raises a glass of scotch in a gesture of a toast, almost lackadaisical, before downing it in a single go, and sauntering into the crowd and disappearing from sight. Sicheng blinks to himself, and takes another sip of his champagne. 

Later, they're closing up for the night and he's clearing the scattered glasses sprawled over the floor, and all thought of the stranger in magenta is forgotten, until:

“I heard that Jung Jaehyun was here today. _The_ Jung Jaehyun.” Jie-qiong shoulder bumps him and whispers, hair coiffed over a slender shoulder, hands busy with a broom as she sweeps the excess glitter away. Sicheng remains woefully ignorant, and thinks of the pile of chucked aside newspapers in his untouched apartment, yellowing headlines and tender edges. Something about his silence speaks of his ignorance, and Jie-qiong swivels to turn to him, amused incredulity in her face.

“Sicheng, don't tell me you've never heard of him? God, you’re hopeless. He's only one of the most up and coming millionaires around here, and he's not even 30 yet too. I would've given my left arm to serve him today, but alas!” Jie-qiong raises her arm in mock distress, exaggerated pull of her features and Sicheng lets out a gleeful cackle. She giggles, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper again. He leans forward, playing along.

“Apparently he refused company all night. Paid the entrance fee and just - kind of just sat there? Drinking quietly and never talking to anyone.” She says that like it's the highest crime, before she widens her eyes, raises her brows and lets out a playful huff, flips her hair over her shoulder. “Not even me!”

Sicheng cuffs her goodnaturedly on the shoulder. “Yah, get back to work, Pinky.” She scrunches up her nose at the nickname, sticks out her tongue at him, sweeping stray glitter onto his shoe, and their eyes twinkle as they laugh. For the shortest moment, when Jie-qiong laughs, she reminds him of Sooyoung, sunshine bright smiles and happiness coursing through her blood, a delicate kindness underneath it all - and his heart suddenly constricts, it hurts - before the moment passes, and Jie-qiong blinks up at him through kohl lined eyes. She whacks him with the handle of her broom, and scampers away giggling before he can chuck his dishrag at her. And Sicheng shakes the memory from his mind, because Jie-qiong is nobody else but herself. It’s unfair for him to keep seeing, keep seeking the ghosts of his pasts.

-

“Arm more outstretched. Lift your leg a little higher. That’s right, good, good. Now, twirl.” Sicheng is decked in draping lilac and lavender today, plastic amethysts and golden glitter tracing his cheekbones, the corners of his eyes. He pants, and he feels a fine bead of sweat break onto his forehead.

Song Qian stands in front of him, hands on her hips and a tongue of nothing but well-meaning critique. Sicheng’s back aches, just slightly, and his arms tremble enough to break the beauty in the fluidity of the dance. She sighs, and her red nails clutch at her head.

“Ah, I know this routine is hard.” She looks up at him, a grin on her features. “I suppose the years have taken some toll on you, even if you look as young as the day I met you. Regardless, nevermind if it isn’t perfect. The audience will still love it when they watch you tonight. Try to enjoy yourself, yes? Your smile was a little stiff back there.” Sicheng lets out a soft chuckle, and presses a handkerchief to his forehead, careful not to disturb the glitter. Jie-qiong sends him a wink from the sidelines, pink fringe hanging around the rim of her headpiece as she practices her routine, all elegant hands and long swinging steps. But Sicheng pushes through, and goes through his dance routine one last time, and at the end, eyes shining and chest heaving slightly, Song Qian’s smile tells him that this will be his best performance yet.

And it is, because for days people will speak of him as the lilac dancer, who in his gentle steps refracted the richest of purples and the dazzle of gold. But maybe more than anything, when Sicheng stood with his arm outstretched, languid, and his chest warm, the heat of light and amazement heavy on his being, the crowd chanting his name like a prayer - he saw the piercing eyes of a figure in dull gold, and the familiar raise of a glass in toast, cast into the shadows of the tumultuous background.

There's something enigmatic about the stranger, a certain gravitational pull that pricked at the base of his neck. Sicheng finds himself weaving through the crowds, the throngs of well wishers and admirers alike who gaped at his beauty and marvelled at his talent, searching hazily for someone in dull gold. 

“Hello,” a gentle tap on his shoulder and a voice dripping baritone catches Sicheng off guard. “You look to be in a real hurry.” 

Sicheng turns, and a dimpled smile peers back at him, belonging to a tall man in dulled gold. His lips are evenly spread, polite and rosy, over a row of perfect teeth, the corners of his grin catching slightly the crease of laugh lines. His eyes are sharp, a little cold, but the cologne draped in the air around them is dripping of opulence, and Sicheng feels his skin buzz excitedly, an electricity lighting him up inside.

“Well, I was. But I suppose I could make some time for you. Got some time to spare.” Everything feels like a familiar game of cat and mouse, teasing, and Sicheng does love a good chase.

The stranger quirks an eyebrow, amused. “An honour, I presume. Even if it’s your own workplace, let me buy you some drinks. You’re the star of the show, after all.” And Sicheng lets himself be led to the corner of the bar, the deep oceanic green of the bottles casting pretty lights across the wood, a warm palm sizzling against the small of his back, prickling in anticipation. Jackson slides over two glasses of a rich woody amber variety, and the stranger nods his head in thanks before his eyes flicker to Sicheng with a telltale sparkle of mischief. 

“Wasn’t sure what you’d drink, but I’ve personally always loved a neat cognac.” Sicheng hums his response into his glass, and the stranger catches his eye over the rim of his glass, an unspoken promise in the curving grin of lips.

It's irrational, a part of his mind pipes up, and Sicheng doesn't even know him, but another part of him revels in the mystery. It's been so long since he's met someone who's piqued his interest in a way this man has. The years of numbness makes Sicheng feel careless, he feels like becoming a careless, reckless man for the night, under the safety of the shadowy lamps and the crooning jazz. The glasses of cognac forgotten, not when there’s already an imperceptible hum of attraction in his blood vessels, a giddiness in his sobriety over how the stranger’s eyes are like winking christmas lights in a pool of darkness. Maybe that’s what leads him to surge forward, one palm on the edge of the bar counter, the other pressed hot on the stranger’s thigh. Sicheng leans in, his breath hot, and their lips mold together seamlessly, the electricity churning in his stomach now given the blessing of release, and it isn’t long before there is a tongue swiping at his lip, a nibble of teeth begging for entrance. 

Sicheng pulls away, lips bitten red and cheeks rosy from a combination of alcohol and the stranger. The stranger blinks half-lidded at him, already partially wrecked, and Sicheng feels pride at the dishevelled hair, his hand still stroking the stranger’s thigh lightly, dangerously.

“You already know who I am,” Sicheng smiles, “but I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Yoonoh.” 

If there was a pause, the slightest hesitation, Sicheng doesn’t notice it, because Yoonoh’s mouth moved like honey, and now Yoonoh’s hand was an insistent grip around his wrist, as they stumble in tandem out into the streets giggling like new lovers, nothing but hot breaths and roaming hands in the darkness of their taxi. Sicheng moans, throws his head back, and loses himself in the press of Yoonoh’s teeth at his collarbones, hard enough to bruise.

(Later, Yoonoh rolls off, sweat trailing golden and speckled across his muscled body, brushes a hand through his dishevelled hair, his eyebrows creasing slightly, a ghost of concern, or guilt passing over his face.

Sicheng looks over, props himself up with his forearms, the stickiness of exhaustion in his joints. He raises a brow and watches Yoonoh flick on a lighter with shaky fingers, press a cigarette to trembling lips. He sighs, “You're all worked up. You’ve got someone waiting back home, is it?”

Being a dirty secret wouldn't be too bad, Sicheng muses, because it made everything a little more clinical, transactional, a little more suspended from reality, knowing that there was no looming threat of attachment. The bitter fumes of cigarette smoke cloud the air, wafting around almost spectrally. It billows around them, and for a moment Yoonoh becomes nothing more than a fading figure surrounded by wispy greys.

“Nah, there's no one, doll.” There’s a short pause. “Just feeling a bit odd. To tell you the truth, I've never done this before.” Yoonoh's face is emotionless as he barks a laugh, and Sicheng thinks vaguely that he looks like an oil painting, or a statue in a museum, cold and untouchable, but his voice betrays him. It's soft, a little vulnerable, cracks in the marble.

“I'll let you in on something too,” Sicheng says after a while, when the silence hangs too long to be comfortable. For some reason, he suddenly feels extremely conscious of the sweat, substances, grime coating his skin. The cold rush of shame floods his stomach as he thinks about what the Sicheng of the past would say in all his sunlit innocence. He’s stone cold sober now, but his head hangs low like migrained. He reaches over, plucks the cigarette away from Yoonoh with gentle fingers, and sucks in a breath of nicotine, eyes watering. His voice is flat when he continues. “I've never done this before either, Yoonoh.” 

Yoonoh bristles next to him, and the sheets crinkles under his bare thighs. Sicheng watches the bright lights of advertisements pulsate below them, the apartment hanging above the rush of the streets, and then Yoonoh’s scratching his neck, the sound like sandpaper, all rough and prickly, uncomfortably louder than the honking of the automobiles and the din of rowdy conversation.

“It's - Uh, It's Jaehyun, actually.”

Sicheng takes another drag, and his face turns almost feline, his eyes teasing as he takes in the shadow of guilt lingering in the air. “Oh, I knew. I just think I like Yoonoh more, though.” He smiles and resumes looking at the flashing lights, and there is no more need for words.

When Sicheng turns back, Yoonoh's smiling at him with an indulgent upward quirk of his lip, and his curving eyes look like pools of light in the dim darkness of the hotel room, shining, sparkling, and Sicheng is breathless for a second.)

-

**1930; Hong Kong**

A dreamy sigh emits from the woman, and she pats down her skirt with a forlorn look of understanding, the acceptance of his rejection fading the hope in her eyes. After she walks away, Sicheng drags himself to the bar, propping himself on one of the stools, sending Jackson a tired smile when the man slides over a gin and tonic. Moments later, a figure stands beside him, a hand in his pockets and crisp suit crinkling.

It’s been routine for months and months by now, and Sicheng doesn’t need to look up to know who it is, and Yoonoh doesn’t bother with pleasantries, taking the seat beside him, crossing one leg over the other, smirking over the rim of his glass of scotch. He's in royal blue today, the colour of the a rolling sea on a good day out.

“Another one bites the dust?” Yoonoh's words are casual, but there is a bitterness, coldness underlying his cadence, and Sicheng rolls his eyes, a smile curving at his lips already.

“Hardly. She was lovely to talk to, really, she just needed a little … misdirection.” And then Yoonoh scoffs, a harsh, hard sound and tips back his glass. Sicheng watches his adam's apple bob, neck coated with a slight sheen of sweat, and he feel something hot unroll in his stomach. 

“What time are you done today?” It's a passingly negligible pleasantry, and they both know it doesn’t matter, because by midnight Sicheng will be scrabbling at the other’s buttons and Yoonoh will be whispering his name like a prayer, and together they will exalt their bodies in the alcoholic blessing of a lack of inhibition, a well worn ritual telling of their intimacy.

“Oh, I don’t know. Depends what’s on the agenda tonight, isn’t it?” Sicheng looks over with a coy twist of his shoulder, and bats his eyelashes, a innocence decorating his lips. Yoonoh leans forward fast, crosses the inches between their faces in seconds before he even notices what has happened, but Sicheng kisses back with vigour, and their teeth click together. Yoonoh’s fingers are drumming a pressure on his thighs, insistent through the silk of his trousers, and his fingers knead higher and higher, until Sicheng hums low, and slides his hands down Yoonoh’s neck, slick with sweat. Sicheng pulls away, their breaths in unison despite the spaces between them, his eyelids fluttering in desire. The world seems to blur around them, and Yoonoh doesn't look much better, his eyes glazed over, his lips bitten, sticky, shiny.

“You've got a new lip balm,” Yoonoh whispers, and his voice is a husky baritone. Sicheng is surprised for a moment, shock flickering in his eyes before he realises that nothing really goes unnoticed by Yoonoh, who raises a brow at the seeming lack of subtlety blatant across his face. It's unnerving, the quiet care and observation that Yoonoh bestows solely upon him, and Sicheng feels as if he's treading water into uncharted new territory.

Sicheng tries to recover, sniffs haughtily. “Stealing my identity anytime soon? And it's cherry, you creep.” He holds his breath for a moment, before Yoonoh laughs, throws his head back and lets out a full bellied chuckle, and it reverberates through the bar. Sicheng blinks, because he was expecting a polite chuckle, closed and formal. But Yoonoh’s laugh feels pleasant, and at the same time uncomfortably intimate for a moment. Something fizzles in the air, and the low, incoherent warble of music drifts over, soft. When Yoonoh continues, his voice is scarcely heard over the trembling jazz. 

“I just like the small things you do.”

And Sicheng holds back the urge again to make a teasing, careless quip, because a small voice in the back of his head tells him this Yoonoh who's looking at him with curving eyes as if he held starlight in his hands, whose heart looks to be stuttering a million miles a minute, who smiles shy after the loudness of his laughter, is a Yoonoh with his guard down.

Sicheng feels as if something delicate hangs in the distance between them, sweet and fragile, and he's toeing the first step in a racetrack littered with eggshells. His heart is pounding louder than his thoughts. Their relationship feels like a rickety amusement park ride, and now he is teetering on the edge several months in, seconds before a drop that’ll leave him gasping. He takes another gulp of his gin, and the bubbly effervescence that slides down his throat isn't as comforting as he expects. He sighs, looks down at the glittering floor, before turning his profile to the bar, stretching technicolours of glass bottles. 

“What are we, Yoonoh?” His voice is defeated, a little broken, because he's many years past being little too old to have ambiguity stalk his relationships and pepper confusion into his heart. This game of cat and mouse has gone on for far too long, Sicheng growing weary from the chase but more so Sicheng is scared of his tender heart raising its head in hope.

And maybe Yoonoh picks up on the cynical harshness of his soft voice, the aged pain crushing the edges of his words, the unspeakable loneliness that hangs in the emptiness of his statement. Yoonoh looks at the bustling crowd a distance, a lifetime away, exclamations nothing more than a murmur to their ears. And when Yoonoh speaks again, there's the business-like polish that shines through, artificial and cold, whiteness of the business card sharp, and Sicheng thinks vaguely that he’s looking at Jaehyun now.

“Does it matter? We could be anything you want us to be.”

He wonders for a moment if it is too late to press his lips to Jaehyun, and bring back a Yoonoh with open smiles and unflinching eyes, but the bracket of time has passed, so Sicheng clatters his unfinished glass onto the bar counter, walks away with his hips swaying a promise. 

Muttered words whispered in hot spaces, endearments without the history of sickening affection, hands that palm his hips and leave the pretty purple of bruise, fingers that don’t touch in the aftermath, kisses that don’t stray into the haziness of tenderness. Sicheng tells himself that it is better this way, casual, beneficial, clean, and doesn’t watch the way Yoonoh’s palm lingers too long on the curve of his shoulder before he rolls over and presses the emptiness of the duvet between them.

It’s better this way, he tells himself again, as if he was on the verge of thinking otherwise. (But he’s failing, because he’s already falling instead.)

-

“Hey,” Yoonoh whispers one morning, his voice gruff as they stare at the ceiling, sunlight streaming in steadily as their chests heaving in the aftermath of pleasure. “If you’re free today, do you want to explore the city or something? Instead of just heading home, or wherever you go on the weekends?” Sicheng is silent, and then Yoonoh is scrambling out a laugh, “Sorry, maybe I’m crossing the boundaries here. Forget it.”

Sicheng props himself up by the elbows, and looks at Yoonoh, dark hair splayed on the pillow and his arms cupped behind his head, curving biceps unconsciously flexed. “No, it’s fine. I’d love to go out with you. Funny how we always meet in the dark, isn’t it?” And the shy smile that Yoonoh shoots him threatens to overwhelm his face, and Sicheng’s fingers find themselves drawn to Yoonoh’s reddening ears, and he tweaks the lobe as they giggle softly in unison.

The streets feel different with Yoonoh’s hand in his own, and the crisp autumn breeze is a gentle kiss on their cheeks as their footsteps fall in tandem on the concrete. It feels odd at first, because he’s accustomed to seeing Yoonoh under the flicker of night lights, hair slicked back sleek and professional, only coming undone from the flick of Sicheng’s fingers, the scent of alcohol hanging in the air between them. Today, however, something about their appearance feels even more intimate than intimacy itself, and Sicheng blinks in confusion. Yoonoh’s coat is a rich chocolate brown, and Sicheng finds himself pressing closer just so he can smell the wafting scent of sandalwood and jasmine he would recognise in a heartbeat. 

Yoonoh’s voice breaks out of the blue. “I’m grateful I met you, you know, all those months ago. I feel like I can connect to you, even if we don’t talk that much. And you don’t need to respond, I just thought I’d wanted to get it off my chest.” Yoonoh’s eyes curve into familiar crescents, and they pause imperceptibly as they pass a street vender selling roasted chestnuts, the smoky billows rising a delectable aroma into the air. There’s a wordless desire, and Sicheng feels the rose of blush on his cheeks that Yoonoh understands him so well, and he blames it on the chill of the weather as he tightens his scarf around his neck.

There’s a comfortable silence that lapses between them, and the warmth of the chestnuts seep into Sicheng’s hands even through the layers of the newspaper padding. “Ironically, despite you lying about your identity, I think you’re one of the most honest people I know.” Sicheng turns with a small smile on his face, and there’s a look of pensive contemplation across Yoonoh’s face. 

Sicheng continues, “I think I like that about you. I like quite a lot of things about you, honestly. It’ll be a pity once you lose interest in me.” People come and go, because this was the bitterness of life in a fast paced city, winking out lights faster than one would ever notice. It feels odd to admit it out loud, that Sicheng’s grown rather sentimental, rather soft for whatever they had become, but Yoonoh understands, and doesn’t say anything when the quiet feels too tenuous, filmsy. Instead, the hand tightens around Sicheng’s waist, and when he sneaks a glance over, there’s a smile etched on Yoonoh’s face, a new sparkle in his eyes.

Yoonoh’s eyes light up excitedly like a child’s when they spot a shiny, spotless photobooth along the main street, and Sicheng lets himself be dragged along, laughing softly at the wonder reflected in Yoonoh’s face. It’s fairly new, imported from New York just a few weeks ago, and Sicheng runs his hands over the cool metal of the yellow paint coat. A handful of silver dollar coins later, they are pressed together in a little photobooth and giggling like school children between every flash, and Sicheng wonders why he never saw this side of Yoonoh before.

There’s quite a few seconds between each shot taken, the machinery processing and whirring in the background, and in the moments before their last exposure is shot, in the private intimacy of the photo booth, their laughter dies down, and Yoonoh’s voice comes out very quiet.

“I won’t, by the way. I won’t lose interest in you.” 

Sicheng finds himself speechless with shock, with happiness, and a giddy laugh finds its way onto his face, and Yoonoh is looking at him with kind eyes and an unreadable expression painted on his face. The flash goes off, the moment broken, and they blink in surprise, before their laughter fills the spaces between them.

Come late afternoon, the black and white photos flutter in their coat pockets, as Yoonoh’s foot clamps down on the accelerator as the rented automobile careens through the countryside. _They have the best sunsets out here_ , Yoonoh swore, and Sicheng doesn’t tell him that he would have believed him regardless. Yoonoh's hand atop his own felt like a comforting warmth as they speed through the widening vastness, a gentle weight, earthy like the rolling hills they pass. Yoonoh's voice is the ground beneath his feet, and Sicheng feels his breath fall short, a familiar tightness in his chest, oven fresh, hot. His eyelids flutter on their own accord.

Oh, he thinks. Oh.

Because Sicheng’s fallen in love all over again, against his better judgement, even when he said that he wouldn’t, not with the freshness of heartbreaks decades ago. He wonders how love feels both like a freight train abruptly crashing into him, crushing his lungs, and yet simultaneously like a down blanket, wrapping him in a giddy warmth, and Yoonoh’s profile is also some combination of harsh lines and soft features. He tightens his hand around Yoonoh’s and the smile that he receives is blinding.

He’s fallen yet again, and the sunset hits an angle at Yoonoh just so, dispensing a casual gold, and in that moment, Yoonoh becomes indistinguishable from the sun itself. 

-

It’s a pleasant surprise, seeing Yoonoh duck into the bar one afternoon, and Sicheng presses their lips together for a kiss that isn’t rough or demanding, instead achingly sweet, soft and his hands wind themselves naturally on the curve of Yoonoh’s jaw, Yoonoh’s hands drawing small circles onto the small of his back as if they were always belonged there. And then Yoonoh sweeps out the doors of the bar just as fast with a soft peck on his cheek and hard pat on his ass, with a muttered mention that he couldn’t resist popping in, and that he’ll swing by later in the evening after another business meeting, with a promise of a present. Doyoung, the secretary-assistant, smiles indulgently at him, and bows hastily, before he rushes after Yoonoh, calling out appointments he reads off a pristine white notebook cased in expensive leather.

There’s an unspoken understanding between them ever since the day in the photo booth, and there’s a lightness in his chest that makes him feel like a paper kite, high in the endless sky with only Yoonoh tethering him to the ground with warm laughter and dimpled smiles.

Sicheng finds himself blinking dizzily, watching Yoonoh’s retreating figure, his heart fluttering pleasantly. He turns around and catches Jackson’s eye, and the man makes an exaggerated contortion in his face of some mooning lover, and the boom of Jackson’s raucous laughter makes Sicheng roll his eyes good naturedly. Jie-qiong sidles up to him, and there’s a twinkle in her eye that make the hairs on Sicheng’s arm raise. He leans his hip on the armchair with a falteringly convincing practiced indifference, and nods his head when she perches herself on the other side, a knowing smile stretched over her pink lips. Her eyes pierce him, and Sicheng feels faintly as if he was under some interrogative spotlight orchestrated by his best friend.

“Dong Sicheng. I've kept my nose to myself for _months_ , and you're still not telling me anything? Not even after that man breezes in here practically every other night for the past few months and whisks you away _each time_? Don't think I haven't noticed!” Jie-qiong has her chin jaunty in the air, and a decided cross of her arms.

“Pinky’s got a point, pal. You’ve got it all over your face, like you’re always sipping giggle water.” Jackson leans on the backrest of the armchair, a wide grin breaking on his face as he polishes a champagne glass, and Sicheng blushes a bright red as he groans feebly into his hands. There’s a loud smack of hands that tells him that Jie-qiong and Jackson were revelling in his misery, and Sicheng sinks further into his hands.

“So will you give us a name now?” Jie-qiong’s smile is infectious, and Sicheng already knows that he can’t keep it a secret for much longer.

“His name’s Yoonoh.” Jie-qiong squeaks in excitement, and Sicheng continues. “But I think you’d be more familiar with Jung Jaehyun.”

“ _No_ ,” she breathes. And then Jie-qiong jumps up from her perch, and tackles him in a bone-crushing hug as Jackson stumbles out of her arm radius. “Oh, Sicheng! You’re living the dream, I’m so happy for you! I’m jealous, of course, but I’m so happy! He’s a stunner, and the way he looks at you?” She hums low, her face nuzzled in his shoulder, but Sicheng can hear the smile in her voice. “He’s got that serious look, you know?”

Sicheng doesn’t know, or at least, refuses to acknowledge whatever this seriousness entails, and he ducks his head as Jie-qiong coos at the blush blooming on his ears, and Jackson smacks his arm in congratulatory roughness.

(The surprise Yoonoh presents him is a lovely locket necklace, plain gold, with little embellishments, and Sicheng loves the simplicity. “A matching set!”, Yoonoh had proclaimed goofily with such tumultuous joy in his voice, as he moves aside the collar of his own dress shirt to reveal an identical piece hanging between his collarbones.

 _Open it_ , Yoonoh whispered after he had attached it onto the delicate slope of Sicheng’s neck with careful hands. With a gentle click, inside the locket peers back their smiling faces, captured in grainy black and white of the photobooth print, Sicheng smiling giddily, a little dazed, gaze fixated on Yoonoh, who’s peering at him with a tender warmth in his eyes, his dimpled grin wide and stunning. Neither of them are looking at the camera.

Sicheng has received many, many gifts in his time. It was something that naturally came alongside the perks of his job. All expensive, intricately crafted treasures worth more than a month’s salary, but for some reason, the gold locket in his palm in all its simplicity, with the soft intimacy of the picture inside, knocks him speechless, and the grin spreading on his face almost makes his cheeks hurt.

Yoonoh whispers something else, but Sicheng doesn’t catch it as he kisses Yoonoh’s nose, cheeks, fingers. Immortality was a terrible thing, but with Yoonoh beaming down at him, dimples and eyes crinkling, all Sicheng can do is wrap his arms around his lover, and kiss him so hard that they sees stars, the lockets on their necks close to the warmth of their hearts, the smiles on their face larger than anything else in the world.)

-

Yoonoh’s voice is cold, hard, harsh, and Sicheng can almost visualise the icy glare of his eyes, the hardened jawline, the click of his dress shoes against the shining surface of their marble floor. Sicheng feels the uncomfortable sensation that he shouldn’t be here, listening in on a private conversation, and he makes a move to turn away, before he hears Yoonoh’s voice rise several octaves.

“Mother, I don't give a damn. I’ve told you countless times. I do not want the marriage with Lee Da Bin. I won’t repeat myself anymore.” There’s a muffled outcry over the static, a tinny voice crying out discontentment, and for a moment Sicheng wants to rush in, wrap his arms around Yoonoh, anything to distract from the fast tap of the man's shoes. The name Yoonoh all but spits is a vaguest echo in the back of his mind, and Sicheng blearily recalls Jie-qiong shoving a tabloid in his face and swooning about how gorgeous the model’s updo was, or how long her legs stretched. He bites the edge of his knuckle, and presses his ear to the door, careful.

There’s more indecipherable yelling on the telephone again, and Yoonoh’s dress shoes click faster, less pauses between his pacing. “And so what if there's someone else? If I want to marry someone else, then I'll _fucking marry someone else_. What’s so difficult about that? Mother, you’re being ridiculous.” 

Sicheng feels himself still, his lungs suddenly frozen, cementing and confirming his foreboding fears, and there’s an ominous feeling that resides like a unfurling snake, hot in his belly, a whisper on the edges of his mind that tells him that his time with Yoonoh is coming to an end, that soon it’ll be time to go yet again.

A loud slam startles him, and the crash of glassware that sounds immediately after tells Sicheng that Yoonoh’s just pushed their dresser. The pungent scent of over concentrated cologne wafts through the door, sandalwood and jasmine splattered thick on their carpet, and his nose wrinkles. There’s another thump, and Sicheng imagines Yoonoh’s balled fist connecting with mahogany. 

“A whore? He's not -” Yoonoh’s voice is quiet, seething in a cold anger, and Sicheng just barely catches his words. When Yoonoh continues, he’s mechanical, business, and there’s no trace of the unbridled emotion that burst forth just moments before.

“You’ve crossed the line, Mother. Don’t contact me for a while. I’ll send your calls straight to Doyoung. Have a good night.” The dial spins with another click, and the telephone goes silent. 

Sicheng’s foolish for thinking this can go on without anyone getting hurt, without someone nursing the ridges of a broken heart. Whatever him and Yoonoh were - they’d never really talked about it, evaluating themselves by some definition didn’t feel like enough, somehow - felt like a shard of glass, or a piece of a mirror. Characterised by sharp edges, but two sides of the same copper coin, as if Yoonoh was shining back at him the warmth of reflected light.

Sicheng backs away from the room, and slips out the front door before anyone realises he was ever there. His unpractical shoes click a pattern on the street, rain puddles grimy with soot, mixed with greying snowfall, and Sicheng walks until he turns mindless, numb against the biting cold. The coat draped on his shoulders is thin, provides little respite from the chill of winter, and Sicheng finds himself huddled inside a fading yellow phone booth, all peeling advertisements and questionable numbers scrawled obscenely on the glass. His fingers move of their own accord, punching in the familiar numbers, thinking bitterly that here he was again, drawn in by some gravitational pull against his rational mind. He thinks of the first day Yoonoh approached him, velvet baritone and a sharpness in the suit that didn’t match the softness of his smile. The taxi arrives, a yellow spot hovering in the white of snow, like a fading sun in an overcast sky, and Yoonoh steps out with concern in his face and an extra coat in his hands.

And when Yoonoh gathers him in his arms later that night, hot tea spreading a warmth in both their stomachs and shoulders deep in the heavy duvet, there is no looming tomorrows beyond his palm on the curve of Yoonoh’s chest and the warmth of Yoonoh’s eyes, his head tucked seamlessly into Yoonoh’s neck and Sicheng wants to stay this way forever.

-

Sicheng finds himself at the apartment one day, hands full of clattering bottles, wandering the unnatural hours of the darkest night, pushing open the front door with the key pressed into his hands days, weeks, months before. In the slanting frames of moonlight that splash into Yoonoh’s apartment, he becomes a single figure tottering all over, swaying arms and bottles of discarded sherry scattered on the floor. One of them knocks over, a resounding clink that echoes in the stillness of the night. Sicheng gasps, the silence becomes oppressive, choking, suffocating, and then he cries stormily, quietly. He knows very well, soberness be damned, that his departure draws closer, more imminent than ever, and he drinks himself in search of an emotionless oblivion, an abyss void of heartbreak. 

A sob chokes out before he can stop it, and the light in the parlour flickers on as Yoonoh stumbles into the hallway, hair sticking to his face and the imprint of pillows fresh on his cheek, eyes squinting and mouth slightly open.

“Sicheng? What - Oh god, Sicheng -” Yoonoh’s face crumbles as he looks at the sparkling trail of tears, the haphazard throw pillows, the overwhelming spike of liquered white grapes that clings to the air. Yoonoh takes hesitant steps, the twist of his leg awkward, as if he was just barely holding himself back from barrelling forward. Sicheng peers up, wipes the back of his mouth with a crinkled shirt sleeve, and looks out the window, soft hiccups building in his throat.

Yoonoh squats down, the silk of his pajamas casting navy ripples. His voice is calm, careful. “You should have called me to come join the party. What’s wrong, doll?” 

“Party’s over,” he slurs back, “bay-bee. Pity party’s over,” Sicheng giggles, before he clamps down on his mouth again, and presses his lips sullenly to another bottle, feels the heavy liquor slide down his throat. Yoonoh’s eyebrows crease like wax paper.

“Hey, hey, enough for you, doll. You’re gonna drink yourself dry. You don't have to tell me what's wrong now, but the morning’s gonna be hell to pay if you keep at this, come on.” 

Yoonoh’s hands pry the bottle away, and the contents are flushed into a nearby potted plant. Yoonoh winces slightly, but turns back when Sicheng makes a high noise in the back of his throat like a whine, bordering on hysterical. Yoonoh's arms hold him tight, and a voice murmurs soft reassurances that fly over his head.

“Don't wanna get to tomorrow,” and Sicheng babbles more nonsense, because it feels like no attempt or combination of words or letters would even express a silver of this feeling that’s tearing into him. Tomorrow rhymes with sorrow, he thinks blearily, and then he clutches Yoonoh like a lifeline, sobs harder at the prospects of the new day.

“You're forgetting there's always a tomorrow, doll.” Yoonoh's got a softness lining his face, a concern still hovering in the edges of his smile.

Sicheng blinks up at him, suddenly overcome with a fiery burning, a rage that blackened his mind into a tunnel vision, the licking flames of anger at his immortality, at his predicament, the dark coal of desperation hot.

“Fuck me, Yoonoh” he manages to rumble out. “Fuck me till I forget, please, please, please,” and the word becomes a refrain in his mouth, a silver of something concrete that he holds on to, as he grips Yoonoh's arms harder as if it'll make him stay. Please, please, please. The obscenity of his language is ugly, the brazenness of alcohol bubbling warm in his blood, and his wandering hands seek Yoonoh like salvation. In his haziness, he watches Yoonoh’s apple bulge as the man swallows, and Sicheng can almost hear the clockwork mechanisms ticking in the other's brain. Yoonoh leans in, and Sicheng puckers his lips pink and pouty and cherry red pretty.

“ _No_ ,” Yoonoh whispers, and his voice is a dip of cool water pooling over the heat that’s been trickling on the surface of Sicheng's skin. “Not like this, doll. Not like this. Come on.” Almost as fast as the fire burns merrily, it extinguishes under the liquidity of Yoonoh's dark eyes, leaving behind only the cracking, smothered coal of a breaking heart, the billowing smoke of sadness, the bitter ashes of cruel fate.

There are hands guiding him, lifting him up, and Sicheng is staggering on heavy feet. Yoonoh’s arms are a steady warmth, solid, urging him to rest against a pillow that wasn’t there before. Confusion feels thick, swampy in his mind. Navigation feels heavy-handed, and Sicheng is teetering one foot in clueless and the other on a banana peel. Sicheng slumps into down feathers, alcohol buzzing a dance across his skin, and he giggles again as he watches Yoonoh’s pattering feet, rushed, before he disappears into the kitchen. There’s undecipherable murmurs low in the distance, and Sicheng yawns, pulls the pillow closer to his face. Yoonoh comes back in with a jug of water and a warm washcloth, and his hands are a gentle pressure on Sicheng’s cheeks. Doyoung knocks on the door, and wordlessly hands Yoonoh a pillbox, his eyes mirroring a similar concern, before he slips out to give them privacy.

Yoonoh places a little tablet on his tongue, and Sicheng diligently swallows. Yoonoh’s eyes are endless with warmth, feeling like the earthy ground beneath bare feet. Their roots have grown far too deep to remain painless, and Sicheng feels the foreboding sting of tears once again.

“Hey, hey, no more tears. No more tears.” Yoonoh’s lips pepper his eyelids, his eyelashes fluttering butterfly kisses, so ticklish, so delicate that Sicheng finds himself smiling. “I’m right here, Sicheng. _I’m right here._ ” 

Yoonoh’s eyes and the soft cadence of his velvet voice weave together into a euphony, a symphony, that rides on the quiet of their apartment, pools into his sleepy eyes a delightful melody. It’s so unlike the moonlit song so many years ago, and Yoonoh’s words lilt and dip until it feels almost like a dance, a waltz of translucent fabrics and swirling sleeves. Sicheng blinks up at Yoonoh, and it’s almost as if he’s forever hopelessly stargazing into a cloudy night, before a warm palm wipes a tear off his cheek, and he slips into a dreamless sleep. He’s always falling and falling, breaking into pieces that scatter, and he’s not sure how much longer he can bear to pick himself back up.

-

In the weeks that follow, Yoonoh treats him a little more tenderly, soft touches and careful hands, as if Sicheng was a crystal vase, delicately cut, in a filmsy little cardboard box, rain-soaked, with an entire roll of fragile tape and warning stickers plastered all over. It’s only when Sicheng turns around and huffs at the faint ghostly touch with a look of irritation, that Yoonoh lets out a sigh of relief, and holds him more like he was a real person, and not fine china.

One afternoon, Yoonoh asks for the gold locket back, says something about Doyoung sending it in for a little maintenance, and Sicheng hesitates with his hand around the pendant, but he thinks nothing of it later when Yoonoh returns it to his hands that night without a single change, no encrusted diamonds, or engraved message, so he only supplies a quirk of an unimpressed eyebrow that makes Yoonoh laugh. It’s forgotten after a while, and the gold locket is nothing more than a tender display of affection that falls warm against his collarbones. The memory of Yoonoh’s laughter feels like the roasted chestnuts of street vendors, delightfully hot in his frozen hands. It was a deep rumble in his chest, earthy, grounded.

The rest of the week is a lackadaisical assortment of moments stolen from life. It almost feels like snapshots, a burst of images colouring his eyelids, not unlike the printing of a film roll full of precious memories that day ages ago as he stumbled out of the booth with Yoonoh firmly by his side. Life is endless shots of Jie-qiong, her cheekbones miles high, eyes glimmering, lips curving into an endless smile, as she glitters under the technicolour lights. Doyoung, piercing eyes and cashmere sweaters, perceptively kind, a stack of notes haphazard in his arms. Song Qian, older like fine wine, serenity a constant in the ink of her eyes. Jackson, calloused hands over the sleek of mahogany, gruff smile and red ears and a comfort in his voice. And Yoonoh, above all of them, dimples shining and eyes bright, as if he held starlight in his being, Sicheng in his arms.

And he thinks to himself that he’s going to miss this. But for today, Yoonoh’s heartbeat is steady beneath Sicheng’s fingertips, and before he knows it he whispers three words into the still afternoon air, too instinctual and too fast that he can’t catch it between his teeth any longer, the force of his emotion barrelling out, naked and raw. It hangs between them, powerful, telling of so much more than the muttered words. Yoonoh peers at him blearily for a moment, stunned, before there’s a blinding smile, and the dimples don’t fade. Yoonoh whispers it back, a gentleness dripping like honey in his voice, a warmth in his eyes that pools over their entwined bodies. Language is a funny thing, when three words can convey something so intimately beautiful shared between two souls.

Sicheng presses himself further into the crook of Yoonoh’s neck, and sucks in his breaths slow, one at a time, closes his eyes amidst the wafting familiarity of smoky vanilla, the faint brush of lavender. The clock is always ticking, but he wants to remember this forever.

-

It’s time to go.

Sicheng handles the worn leather of his bags, and takes one last look around the apartment he's come to call home. A lengthy letter lays innocently on the nightstand, and he doesn’t want to imagine the reaction it’ll receive. Yoonoh lies sprawled on the bed they share, small for once, underneath the heavy white duvet, a single arm outstretched, reaching for where Sicheng would have been. It is cold, a stray draft shivering in the room, but the windows are shut. Soft snores pepper the air, and Sicheng finds himself padding forward on soft, hesitant feet, kneeling before the sleeping man.

He presses a featherlight kiss to Yoonoh's lips, savouring the familiarity for a second longer than necessary, but pulling away before he wakes up. Yoonoh makes a soft noise like a hum, content, and rolls over, nestling further into the duvet, small smile on his face. Sicheng stands, feeling the ache of his bones once again of eternity in all its intensity. Time stretches and stretches and stretches and he can’t breathe for a moment as he watches a vulnerable serenity blanket itself on Yoonoh’s sleeping face. He’s not entirely sure how many minutes have passed, but eventually there are no tears to cry as he stills his heartbreak away for another day, and now this is just another piece of worn luggage, comfortably numb. 

A voice cuts through the silence, and he looks up.

“Sicheng?” Doyoung repeats, standing in the hallway, arms clutching a stack of what must be paperwork, something hurt and confused painted on his face as he takes in the bags and the unnatural emptiness of the room. 

Sicheng takes a few steps forward, and Doyoung's eyes harden, and something clicks into place, before his face falls with something akin to desperation, anger, shock. His voice is a harsh whisper. “He wants to marry you, you know? He loves you so much and he doesn't even know how to deal with it. And you're just - ”

Sicheng brushes past, a push of his shoulder, and he doesn't look back once. He hears Doyoung rush after him, slippers pattering on the living room floor. He pauses at the edge of the door frame, his hand hesitant on the embossed handle. He clamps down on his bleeding heart, and turns his profile to Doyoung, arranging a look of frigid coldness in his features. He's always been a good actor.

“He loves you.” Sicheng’s knuckles whiten on the door knob, and he doesn’t utter a sound.

Doyoung tries one last time, his voice breaking off painfully.

“He loves you so much.”

“I know.” 

And then Sicheng is out the door.

-

Song Qian drives the car, her scarf rippling in the wind as they speed along the countryside. She doesn't speak much, red lips tight, her eyes flickering to Sicheng from time to time in the rear view mirror. It feels like a lifetime ago when he was speeding through the city, neon lights blurring, Yoonoh with an arm around him, young and in love and foolish. Sicheng stares out at the passing plains, watching the yellow beginnings of sunlight spread over the fields, the image of dull gold throbbing in his memory. 

“Jie-qiong wanted to give you this at New Year. We choreographed a partners’ performance.” Song Qian's words are soft, barely above a whisper above the roar of the engine, but they cut like knives into Sicheng. She reaches into a compartment near the dashboard, and presses a familiar headband adorned with glittering pink fringe into his hand.

They drive for a few minutes in a pregnant silence.

“ _Why?_ ” Song Qian's voice is quiet, a little pained, and it speaks volumes of the incomprehension of his actions.

Sicheng catches her eye in the mirror, and steels his face into something of nonchalance. He shrugs. “I don't know. Yoonoh is - We - I just got bored, I guess. I got bored.”

Song Qian looks ahead, eyes unflinching, and the morning sun casts her face into an expressionless cold. Her red-nailed grip tightens on the wheel, and she doesn't look back at him for the rest of the journey. Disappointment lurks in the spaces between them. For a fleeting moment, something small and vulnerable in Sicheng makes him want to confess his plight, but then Song Qian’s voice comes out hard and harsh.

“Something’s not letting you stay.” There is a long pause that stretches infinitely between them, and when she speaks again it is with the sad stickiness of disappointment once more. 

“Lie to yourself, Sicheng. But don't lie to me.”

The rustling hissing of the grass. The bludgeoning, burgeoning sunlight. There's a heaviness that blankets itself on Song Qian's face, telling of experiences beyond her years, she looks older than ever, and Sicheng remembers suddenly that she's nearing 40. 

Something between them has inexplicably severed in the stretching silence, glaringly obvious and yet at the same time almost unnoticeable. And just like that he's lost the pseudo maternal figure that has guided him through a decade in this foreign country. Sicheng thinks to himself that things are better this way, to snip all ties and all cords as seamlessly as he can, puppeteer his way through immortality. 

It is careless, and he is a careless person, and he will continue to skip through wreckage and leave others to clean up his mess as he retreats into whatever it is that made him feel human again. 

Sicheng opens up the gold locket on his neck, the memory of the photobooth fresh in his mind, the pendant so lovingly attached by gentle hands, when he feels a circular lump underneath the grainy picture they had taken. His heart very still, he pulls the portrait of their smiling faces aside, and discovers a little silver ring, simple in its elegance, meticulous in its design. The single diamond glitters in the rising sunlight mockingly.

Maybe he makes a noise, because Song Qian glances back at him, and there’s a look that passes over her face, but Sicheng is busy looking determinedly at the scenery, feeling a burn in the back of his throat, a painful sting in his eyes. He tucks the ring away, a single tear betraying his otherwise emotionless facade, and the golden locket bounces on his chest in tandem with the grittiness of the road.

The rising sun is nothing more than a pinhole in the vast horizons. Her grip tightens on the wheel, and they speed on, blurring the rolling fields into hazy undulations. 

-

When he steps off the train, he notices first that the station is painted in shades of grey, and Sicheng blinks a few times. The weeklong journey has dulled his senses, rocking him disjointedly in a poorly insulated cabin, unevenly stuffed seat. Everything here is so unlike the fluorescent grandeur of the night-lit streets of Hong Kong. There's a shiny newspaper cart near him, city fresh, a young boy with a page's cap waving a tabloid in his hands, hollering in a dialect tainted language that Sicheng only partially understands.

Splashed on the front of the tabloid is a shaky picture of Yoonoh, but to the world it is Jung Jaehyun. It shows him walking down the front steps of his apartment, beside him a pretty girl all long legs and flowing hair, clutching his hand tight, and the flash of their engagement rings bright and expensive. Five carat diamonds, at the minimum. They smile at the camera in unison, the whiteness of their teeth blinding, and Sicheng places the tabloid down like he was burnt.

The memory of that life is tight in his chest, and Sicheng wraps his scarf around his neck, his eyes already stinging with tears as he brisk walks down the street, away from anything that remotely resembles the ghost of his past. He rubs out the image of Yoonoh from his heart like a wrong word, a spelling mistake, only peripherally aware that it leaves the muted stain of grey behind.

But if Sicheng had only opened the tabloid to look deeper, he would have read the headlines about the merged multi-millionaire businesses, he would have seen the bloodshot red eyes, heavy with the remnants of tears, and the vulnerable purple eyebags that swallowed Yoonoh's face. Sicheng would've recognised the dangling gold locket that matches his own, draped tenderly on Yoonoh's neck, sparkling like light itself under the sun whenever the man clutched it with his spare hand, as if it was a lifeline that tethered him to reality, a gravity.

But Sicheng doesn’t see any of this, and he walks away as his dress shoes click an emotionless staccato against the cobblestone, eyes wet, the silver ring on his hand dulled under the overcast grey of the stretching sky. 

Song Qian's parting words rattle in his brain. _Lie to yourself, Sicheng. But don't lie to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooof... why is jaewin's chapter so angsty?? i'm a masochist that's why. bUT i'm probably gonna write some massive fluff after finals to compensate (it's already in the drafts). 
> 
> also the next chapter won't come out till end november/early december bc finals!!!! ugh but i promise that one is fluffier lol
> 
> please please leave a kudos and let me know what you thought of this chapter!!! i love love love reading your comments!! u never know how happy they truly make me feel!!!! big love to all u readers


	5. of cream jumpers, and a basket of tangerines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry this is so late ... kind of lost my mojo & adrenaline after finals ended so this sat half finished in my drafts for ages until i forced myself to sit down and write
> 
> anyway this chapter is winil!!!! lovely pure little bubs. i skipped quite a lot of time in this one, it's set in 1950s because can't you imagine the countryside, white picket fences and fruits and all the pastels of the 50s? wow
> 
> also!!! renjun cameo (he's brothers w taeil)
> 
> playlist:  
> lookalike by conan gray  
> somewhere only we know by keane  
> gondry by hyukoh

**1950; Taichung, Taiwan**

The countryside is peaceful, quiet in a way the city never was. The rustling sound of the leaves and the early chill of the breeze becomes the morning calls to which the rising dawn chases. The velvet suits and crisp loafers and silken pajamas lie tucked into a cardboard box at the bottom of his closet, and the creak of old wood in the house is a familiar greeting. The roasting fire in its hearth crackles with wood from his endless backyard, fills the small house with flickering oranges that paint the walls warm and pretty. 

It’s more intimate than he ever imagined, and the constant of the quiet unnerves him at first, when his thoughts flood his lungs louder and faster than he can anticipate. But the quiet dulls itself over the decades, and Sicheng grows accustomed to nothing more than the whisper of the hillside, and the occasion croon warbling from a radio. There’s nothing more innocuous, nothing more simple than rolling picket fences and the vast stretch of peach trees that sprawl themselves like sleeping cats across his rented land. Here, Sicheng is nothing more than a socially adverse neighbour who plucks his letters with delicate hands, the beige of the straw hat dipping into his eyes, a polite smile telling of only a solitary nature.

It stays this way for many years, dipping his head in a casual nod, bent forward just slightly, whenever a neighbour’s automobile revs past, dust clouds in its wake. There’s no one else for a mile around, at the least, beyond a little cream house just beyond his peach gardens, uninhabited for a long while, and likely continuing to be uninhabited for a long while more. The landlord comes every few months with new freckles dotting his cheeks, an elderly man renting out his land once widowed, armed with the need for rental money and an understanding grin. The delivery boy who sells his produce at the market is simple-minded in the kindest way, and doesn’t ask questions, just loads the van heavy with juicy peaches, and hands over the crumpled bills Sicheng is promised by the companies purchasing his produce.

There’s no real need for money, not really, when Sicheng thinks of the stacks of jewellery and diamond and lavish gifts stuffed into a luggage under his bed, but the simple honesty of this life has a charming quality to it, and he enjoys the sunlit days spent watering the peach trees with the dizzying sweetness hovering in the air. He also doesn’t wish to look like a foolish youth who stole away with the family heirlooms should he present an ostentatiously bedazzled watch to sell to the beady eyed market vendors. 

But what matters in the end is that the location is quiet enough, far enough from the lumbering ghosts of his past. Sometimes the quiet of the countryside was like salvation, a breath of crisp morning air from the drone of the city, but most times the quiet was just another emptiness that spoke measures of his loneliness. But Sicheng knows he cannot keep searching and searching for an endless stream of individuals to fill the void of his being, he cannot keep expecting to love again and again and keep breaking his heart each time. The selfishness of his past is something that haunts him, and when he closes his eyes he sees broken faces and hurting eyes, Yoonoh’s sunken face always hovering on the edges of his vision. He sees Yoonoh in the winking curve of the sunrise and the soft press of earth beneath his bare feet, and sometimes in the fleeting page of a magazine, image glossy and timelessly seared into his lids, and there is nowhere for him to run when the ache grows to tender to bear. But in a way, he grows accustomed to this loneliness too, in time.

Time passes lazily, a little sluggish, and he spends his days wandering barefooted across the fields, or sitting idly on his porch with a paintbrush perched in his hands, trying to replicate the artwork gifted to him throughout the years. The living room boasts an assortment of canvases of all shapes and sizes, the beginnings of an idea splattered across in vivid colours, before Sicheng comes to the dawning understanding that he holds no innate creative vision, and it remains an unfinished canvas to join the graveyard of its brothers, and the hotness of his tears discolour the paint.

Before long Sicheng spies the telltale striking yellows of moving vans pull up across the field, feet tumbling out into the grass and wide eyed joy painted across the faces of the figures climbing out of the automobile. 

His hand reaches up, and the living room plunges into a dim darkness broken only by translucent sunlight as he tugs the curtains shut.

-

He thinks nothing of the new developments to his little neighbourhood. The cream house opposite now stands a pale, watery blue. It almost sinks into the skies, and Sicheng squints at it from time to time just to make sure it was still there, and that a decade of his isolation was not subjecting him to hallucination.

Today, the early spring breeze is a gentle kiss against his face, and his hair flops into his eyes uncomfortably, tickles the nape of his neck and he wonders how Yuta managed this all those years ago. The trees are budding, soon to be in full bloom in a month at most, and this is maybe the time of year that he enjoys the most, seeing the rolling waves of pink and red dust the light green leaves, rows upon rows of peach blossoms singing of spring in his front garden. He is settled comfortably under the shade of an apple tree, sketchbook propped up in his lap as he plucks the spare dandelions drifting in the wind.

A stifled giggle sounds from nearby, and Sicheng spots the tip of a head of honey brown bouncing just beyond the fence, a loud peal of laughter clear as day. Suddenly, a pair of eyes pops above the fence, fingers curling around the ridge, and Sicheng finds himself smiling politely when the eyes curve into telltale crescents.

“Renjun-ah, stop disturbing our neighbours,” a faraway voice calls, “you haven’t even finished unpacking!” And the eyes widen, and Renjun lets out a little wave of goodbye, before his head disappears, and Sicheng spies a young man in the distance, a brother, arms akimbo and a look of exasperation painted across his face, cream jumper winking against the blue sky.

The brother raises a hand in greeting, and Sicheng finds himself sketching the cable knit curves of a cream jumper across his papers as the sun dips into the horizon, long after the two boys had disappeared into the distance.

-

There is a knock on his door, abrupt in the lazy afternoon, and Sicheng pulls his body off the rough sofa, pads across the room hesitantly.

When he opens the door, the sunlight beams in blindingly, and he blinks in disorientation before his gaze focuses on a man in front of him, dusty red and brown hair curling into his neck, owlishly wide eyes, and a bright smile plastered on his face. Sicheng remembers the brother in the cream jumper, and he shoots him back a polite nod.

“Hi! I'm Taeil, and I'm one of your new neighbours. You've, ah, you've met Renjun already!” Taeil's voice is soft, a little high, and reminds Sicheng of a clear breeze in spring, lilting, lifting.

“Nice to meet you, Taeil. Hope you’ve settled in comfortably.”

Taeil’s smile never falters, and he hands over a little fruit basket adorned with hand picked tangerines, bursting bright oranges and succulence.

“We thought it'll be nice to give our neighbour some of our picks before we send them off to the market.”

Their fingers brush, and Taeil's smile is so dizzying bright, that Sicheng feels his mouth numb slightly before his brain clicks back into place.

“Thank you, Taeil. They're lovely. Help yourself to any of the peaches out there.” Sicheng makes a move to shut the door, when fingertips curve around the edges, and Taeil's eyes sparkle slightly. Sicheng notes that he is wearing a lilac sweater today, sleeves too long and swallowing his small frame whole.

“You haven't told me your name.”

“I haven't.” There is a pause. “It's Sicheng.”

He presses door shuts with a sharp click, but it is a while before he hears the telltale soft, retreating patter of footsteps that fade from his porch. He does not dwell on this longer than necessary, even if the comforting pastel of lilac lingered on the edges of his memory.

When the afternoon grows too long to bearable, the basket of tangerines glitter alluringly on his kitchen counter, and Sicheng sighs when his feet move themselves of their own accord across the living room.

Lifetimes ago, Yuta’s voice had been alight with joy when he described a tangerine cheesecake, and Sicheng had giggled over the way his eyes had glazed over, bemoaning the poverty of life over a slice of unattainable delight. Yuta’s smile was warm, and the rolling hills of Taiwan is something he would have enjoyed, Sicheng thinks.

The memory of the recipe is fading on the edges of his mind, and the excess flour coats his kitchenette, the bags of sugar haphazardly propped against the mixing bowls. The rickety oven spreads through the house the aroma of honeysuckle, vanilla and mandarins, and it is vastly different from the bitter jolt of wet paint. The cake emerges misshapen, lumpy at the corners, but the tangerines adorning its top add a pop of sunny simplicity, and Sicheng finds himself pleasantly surprised. He frowns suddenly.

The cake cannot keep for long. The cake cannot keep for long and hence this is a rational strategy, and nothing more. Sicheng pads across his fields with half the cake on a pretty dish decorated with baby blue flowers, and reminds himself of the need for decorum. His knuckles pause at the door, but it opens abruptly before he can even utter a sound, and in its wake is Renjun, eyes shining happily.

Taking in the slight surprise on Sicheng's face, perhaps, Renjun smiles sheepishly, and a small snaggletooth peeks out. “I saw you from the window. Nothing much happens around here so don’t worry, I’m not following you or anything. What’chu got there?” Renjun speaks a mile a minute, and his hands stretch out to prod the cake too fast for anyone to admonish him.

“It’s a tangerine cheesecake. It’s too much for just me, and it’s only polite I return you something as well for giving me that basket.” Sicheng smiles accommodatingly, but Renjun just blinks, eyebrow quirking.

“Uh. We never sent you anything, unless - ah! _Ge_ said he was going out to explore, that sly - yah!” Renjun’s head pops back into the house, his roar deafening, and also amusing in a way that makes Sicheng laugh a little. “Taeil- _ge_! Sneaky neighbour stealer! I wanted to be friends with him first? He’s - ”

Renjun turns back, sheepish blush on his face. “Sorry, what’s your name?”

“I’m Sicheng.”

“Cool. _Ge_! Sicheng’s at the door, and he brought us some cake, and I call first slice!” Renjun’s head swivels back to Sicheng standing awkwardly at the front porch, and there is a dull thump of footsteps padding across the carpet somewhere inside the house. “Actually, would you like to come inside? It’s kind of messy because we’re not really done unpacking but it’s presentable.”

Taeil’s head pops into the door frame, hair messy and a familiar bright grin plastered on his face. “Hi!” He appears slightly breathless. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Keep up, _ge_ , you’re getting old.” Renjun’s smile flicker back on. “Anyway, come on in, Sicheng-hyung? Sicheng-ge? Are you Chinese or Korean cos’ you kind of have an accent either way.” Taeil smacks Renjun's arm undiscreetly, and something about the intimacy of opening up their space and their house makes Sicheng a little uncomfortable.

“I really shouldn’t stay. Thanks for the tangerines again.” Sicheng hands the plate into a stunned Taeil’s hands, bowing slightly before he rushes off faster than either of them can stop him and convince him otherwise. The crunch of gravel is muted beneath his straw sandals, and the setting sun stretches a dusky warmth that somehow fails to touch his retreating figure.

But when he sits alone in his living room with a plate of tangerine cake balanced precariously in his lap as he flips through the grainy reception-weak channels, the tangerine feels a little sour on his tongue now, and the orange no longer shines as bright as sunlight. He groans into his sofa in defeat, and Sicheng wonders if it was the act of sharing a cake with company, that made it taste better.

-

Taeil comes by a few times a week now, sometimes with Renjun in tow, and sometimes without. But he always arrives armed with a basket of tangerines, complaining softly about how there's too many to sell to the markets, and that it'll spoil. Sicheng opens the door that first time with a guarded smile, but Taeil never fails to smile back kinder, softer, harder.

Taeil wheedles his way into the house, remarking something about the beech decor, or the haphazard throw pillows, or the bleary croon of the radio ( _“that's my favourite song!”_ ), and Sicheng barely has the heart to keep his door shut, makes only a soft sigh of reluctant disappointment. Weeks pass, and there are already two more mugs perched on his counter, lilac and baby blue, and the hot chocolate in his cupboard has an increasingly shorter shelf life as Sicheng finds himself marking down extra orders in his grocery lists. If he's perplexed in any manner about this sudden intrusion into his solitude, Renjun's snaggletooth peeking out from a delighted smile is enough to dull the shadowy cast of worry.

A basket of tangerines take up residence by his kitchen window, sunlight streaming its way in, and when he squints into the distant horizon, Sicheng can just make out the watery outline of a familiar house, a light on in the middle of the night, winking in the tunnelling darkness like a star.

Insomnia is a blackened scorch of a ghost hovering and stretching across the walls of his house, but when he turns his head and raises his eyes to twinkling porch light, the coal hot pressure on his chest eases, and becomes as light as a blossom in the memory of Taeil's soft laughter.

-

“You're a painter?” Taeil's fingers pluck up a sunny orange canvas left unfinished sometime last week, and Sicheng watches Taeil's eyes slide carefully over the angular corners of acrylic and the soft curves of half a portrait, one eye vividly twinkling out from the canvas. Sicheng's still not sure who exactly was coming to life on his canvas - sometimes his own vision tricked him into seeing Yoonoh's sparkling crescents, but these days, it's beginning to look more and more like Taeil's gaze of steady kindness.

“I suppose so. In a sense.” Sicheng scratches the back of his ear, uncomfortably aware of Taeil's gaze landing on him with an unreadable expression. A single finger traces the textured arching journey of dandelion yellow streaking unblinkingly across the mandarin orange blossom, the dense streaks of vermilion that climb up the cheekbones of the unnamed individual.

“They're beautiful, Sicheng.” Taeil places the orange back against the wall, and peels the haphazard canvases as he peers through a rainbow of unfinished art. “Are they - are they meant to be left like this?”

“You know, I never really figured that out myself.”

Taeil pulls up an unfinished portrait of Yuta, all creams and yellows and a hint of army green on the edges of brown sunlit hair. There's something intimate that suddenly hangs in the air once more, telling of leaden pasts, and silence falls upon the two.

Taeil breaks it first, his voice careful. “If it helps, I like them this way. There’s a sense of character.” Sicheng looks over at Yuta's murky brown hair - the wrong shade of warmth, he remembers bitterly - and it becomes more like Taeil's reddish locks the longer he stares. When Taeil speaks again, it is soft, a little sad, even, and he's looking at Sicheng with a solemn understanding in his expressive eyes.

“You probably left them this way for a reason, even if you can't explain it.”

It's a thought that Sicheng holds on to.

-

Taeil kisses him first, when the sun stretches low over the horizon, and the kitchen is cloaked in an amber light, dust particles drifting slightly in the stilled air. 

Taeil's singing is the clear kiss of springtime wonder, and if they were in the city, Taeil would be nothing short of a star. But they are in the country, and Taeil’s songs are for nobody’s ears but Sicheng's, and the intimacy of this secret makes it sacred. Today, it is something about uncharted waters and undiscovered emotions, soft crooning in a high, sweet voice like honeyed orange slices.

Taeil fits almost jigsaw-like into his chest, smaller than Sicheng expected, his breath fanning against collarbone. Taeil kisses simply, earnest presses of his lips, brimming with youth and what is perhaps a first love. Taeil is a spring creek in a sunlit forest, a single direction rippling blues across rounded stones. It is the least complicated love Sicheng has ever experienced, soft touches and pure, true smiles shared over mugs of flower teas. 

And Sicheng only truly realises with Taeil in his arms that night just how petite the other man was. They sleep, and come morning, with the steady rise of dawn, he reminds Sicheng of a flower, in some way, beautiful and fragile and dancing in the breeze. The image of Taeil takes root into the grounds of his graveyard heart, and Sicheng wants to laugh, wants to cry at the familiarity of emotional inevitabilities.

-

The late afternoon is hot, even with the windows cracked open and the soft curtains stuffed haphazardly to the side. His tank is sticky with sweat, but Taeil is still draped across his chest, legs curled up and his arms encircling Sicheng.

Taeil’s heartbeat is pattering against their chests, picking up speed in his nervousness, and Sicheng is only peripherally aware of what is to come. 

“I know that I haven’t known you long.” Taeil’s voice is a soft murmur, gentle words in cashmere.

Sicheng raises a brow. “You moved in barely a few months ago.” They’re too fast, he thinks in the back of his mind. He retreats into what is a comfortable conversation, mischievous teasing and light humour that won't dent his heart any more than it should. “We could still be strangers, for all you know.”

There is a soft laugh of a response, clear as day, sunny. “Oh I know. You don’t need to remind me.” Fingers are dancing butterfly kisses across the curve of his chest, and Sicheng presses his chin to the top of Taeil’s head. There is a long pause, and when Taeil speaks again, he suddenly reminds Sicheng of a full glass, with water just barely tipping over the edges of its rims, tentative and vulnerable.

“But I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you beneath that tree, and I knew I’d fallen in love with you once you opened the door, and you were just about the most stunning person I’d ever seen.”

His arm tightens minisculely around Taeil's small frame. “And I suppose this is just a lovely little cordial neighbourly visit, hm?”

“You know what I mean.” Taeil’s head is now tucked into the crook of his neck, not uncomfortable, and his eyelashes are unfairly long and distracting as they flutter absentmindedly. “If you wanted we could stay like this forever, you know? I wished I'd known you earlier, but we have all the time in the world now. I'll move over here, or we'll figure out something one way or another. The fruits we sell at the market is more than enough to keep us all going, and Renjun’ll love it, even if he’s a little disgruntled at first about us.”

Sicheng makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and Taeil’s lips press themselves, drag themselves across the exposed curve of his collarbone, hot kisses against the flimsy strap of his tank top, and Sicheng lets out a shuddering exhale.

“Okay.” He breathes. “Okay.” Taeil looks up, and the smile spreading on his face is enough to mute the drumming pain that rises in his chest. He kisses the top of Taeil's head, his eyes never leaving the descending sun from the canvas of his window, even after their feet grow cold and their fingers curl together like instinct. 

In an ideal world, the sun will never set on them. But today is not the time for heartbreak, and Sicheng holds Taeil as close as he can for his remaining days, sunkissed hair tickling the tip of his nose, slender arms a gentle pressure around him.

-

The next time the freckled landlord appears at his porch, straw hat dipping and wheat pressed between cracking, weathered lips, Sicheng hands over his last payment, and adds a basket of peaches for good measure. The delivery boy, now older, takes the largest, heaviest haul of peaches to the market, back breaking in sweat but a friendly smile still plastered on his weary face as he waves tanned arms at Sicheng.

The bags are packed, stuffed innocuously under his bed, and they creak ominously every time Sicheng sits down, a deathly sigh telling of disappointment. Sicheng glares at the leather bags, red eyes bleary and tear-heavy whenever he glances at the basket of tangerines sitting on his kitchen counter without fail.

His last night in Taichung, Taeil is buried somewhere beneath their rough woven blankets and his arms, and the radio is warbling just slightly as it crooks out some lovesick number. Sicheng's hands rub circles on Taeil’s back, and the other man's content hums vibrate soft beneath his fingertips. Long, languid kisses beneath lamp light, and Sicheng tries to touch Taeil as if it was not goodbye.

Come morning, the sun has yet to rise, the land is basking in darkness as Sicheng stands on his porch, bags clutched in his arms and his straw hat dipping in the cool air. The dandelions are swaying to the side, and the peach trees are barren, desolate. The morning is cold, but the speeding car arriving in the distance is a promise of uneasy warmth. The dust billows as Sicheng steps into the backseat, two leatherworn suitcases stuffed into the trunk and countless lavish bags brimming with extravagant gifts waiting on the blue porch opposite. It's a pitiful excuse for an apology, and Sicheng cannot bring himself to look anywhere but the dusty brown interior of his hailed cab.

He chances a glance up, just once, as the morning sun breaks over the horizon. Renjun is illuminated in the window upstairs, small hands pressed up against the dewy window, pyjamas dwarfing his frame, a look of something vivid and broken across his face. Sicheng almost raises his hand in greeting, before Renjun ducks away, and the car barrels across the countryside without another look, dirt and dust rising, masking the retreating car in musky haze.

Sicheng rests his head on the cool glass of the window, and his heart patters with an ache that intensifies with every rattle of the gravel road. The glass is cold, and his eyes remain bone dry as he watches the watery blue house slip into the horizon into nothing more than a dot in his memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this chapter! please leave a comment or a kudos because it means so much to me! love all you readers who still stuck w this story


	6. of budweisers, and the blast of an electric guitar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took so long. happy 2019!
> 
> playlist:  
> baby came home 2 valentines by the neighbourhood  
> television/so far so good by rex orange county  
> high and dry by radiohead

**1978; Chicago, Illinois, United States**

Sicheng wraps his muffler tighter around his neck, and pulls his coat tighter, before he pushes the handle of a convenience store door, and bursts into an artificial heater-enabled warmth.

His nose stains pink from the cold, and he shakes the fallen snow from his hair. He sneezes.

“Totally gnarly weather out there, huh?” The cashier on duty is young, fresh out of college perhaps, and a barely legible scrawl on his nametag. He's leaning on the counter, fingers busy with untangling some cords from a dangling Walkman.

Sicheng says nothing, but shoots over a quirk of his lips, rummaging in his coat pocket for a wallet. He notes out of the corner of his eye that the cashier's got an wide assortment of rips splashed across his jeans, and grins. The functionality of fashion these years have become questionable, to say the least. Sicheng takes some pride, in the fact that he's not in the least bit swayed by the evolving styles of this new decade. Sicheng does, however, evolve alongside the culinary developments, and he grabs a box of easy microwaveables from the shelf.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” The cashier's got a toothy smile plastered on his face, eyes big and sparkling. His gaze never leaves Sicheng as he scans the microwave macaroni. “I've never seen you around, and I'm _pretty_ familiar with this city. And I work like three jobs, so I’ve seen _everything_.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy. But yeah, I moved here a while ago.” Sicheng sweeps his fringe from his face, and handles the box with his spare hand as he pockets his change. He squints at the scarcely decipherable nametag scrawl. Before his hand pushes on the metal bar of the door, he turns, and lets a smile grace his face. “Have a nice day, Mark.”

“You too, man. Stay warm!” Mark waves, before turning back to his tangled Walkman with a look of exasperation, and Sicheng steps back out into the snowing streets.

The streets haven't changed much these past 30 years. A while ago is a very long while, evidently. The little white lie he rolled off his tongue lingers like chewing gum on the heel of his mind, it itches and nags in the back of his head, and Sicheng furrows his brows subconsciously. It’s nothing more than one of the many lies that have accumulated over the years, but yet this feeling persists, and Mark’s eyes become familiar in their simple kindness.

Clouds hang like the last dregs of leaf-spotted tea in a dreary sky, and the itch of being nothing more than a liar makes Sicheng sigh, and he buries his face into his muffler. One step at a time, he thinks.

Later, the microwave beeps a steady wave of alerts, and the macaroni lies steaming in a flimsy plastic plate. Sicheng is sprawled over a scratchy leather sofa, barely worn in, socked feet dangling over the arm as the television plays unintelligible soap operas. 

The big apartment swells into unfathomable silence, beyond him, above him, on and on. The television warbles, and the woman murmurs something about being together forever, and Sicheng rolls his eyes.

-

_(“Read that again, louder this time. You’ve got this.” Yoonoh’s voice is patient, even if the hours have stretched far longer than expected, and the inky drip of night hangs outside._

_“ … Jane told hilario - hilarious jokes.” Sicheng looks up from the exercise book, breath hitched in his throat, only to meet shining eyes. With more confidence, smile breaking across his face, Sicheng repeats himself. “Jane told hilarious jokes.”_

_“Yeah! You got it. I’m proud of you.” Yoonoh claps his hands together, before shifting over the duvet to press a kiss to the top of Sicheng’s head, warm arm curled comfortably over the other’s back and waist. After a moment’s hesitation, he adds “Hilarious is a hard word.”_

_Sicheng murmurs into the soft cotton of Yoonoh’s unbuttoned dress shirt, closes his eyes amidst the familar wafting sandalwood and aftershave. “And English is a hard language.”_

_“C’mon. You’ve got me teaching you English. It’s going to be a smooth ride, and I’ll be here every step of the way.” Yoonoh peers down at him, eyelashes falling soft and dark, eyes kind and warm, before a smirk stretches across his face. “I did live in America for four years.”_

_“And you’ll never let anyone forget that!” Sicheng raises a palm to smack Yoonoh, but instead they huddle closer and dissolve into uncontrollable giggles that rise into the quiet night, stars twinkling outside as bright as Yoonoh’s open heart. )_

The subway rushes past, and the obnoxiously pink and green graffiti speeding by is just a technicolour blur. His coat flaps in the wind, and his muffler does little to protect from the piercing cold of the sunlight-less underground. The little itch of guilt is still burrowing in the nape of his neck, a prickly and uncomfortable warmth he does not seek.

Gratitude is a constant amidst the notions, and Sicheng is drowning in unpaid kindnesses from strangers, lovers, friends. He has been nothing but a selfish taker - taking and taking till he bleeds from the guilt of it all. Sicheng feels the pinprick of goosebumps, but it is not from the winter cold. Learning the foreign tongues of the English Language in laboured nights with Yoonoh is but one of the many, many debts Sicheng has accumulated over his years. 

His mouth hardens into a line. There's too many things, by now, that he owes his pasts for. There is a bitter taste in his mouth, and a nagging itch on his neck. The debts he is forever unable to repay feel like an ever lengthening noose.

He owes too much.

-

The bells to the convenience store jingle, and Sicheng steps in with a smile already on his face, cheeks still pink from the cold.

Kindness came in small greetings, one step at a time, Sicheng reminds himself. “Mark! Nice to see you.” 

Mark looks up, eyebags dark and heavy, looking overworked and exhausted to his bones, before a smile lights up on his face and he waves a hand in greeting. He huffs a little, “I mean, I work here - so it was kind of inevitable, man.” Mark smiles again. “I didn’t catch your name last time?”

“I’m Sicheng.” There is an awkward pause where they stand and stare at each other, grins drawn tentatively, before Sicheng remembers his agenda for coming here. “Sooo do you have any recommendations for food ‘round here? The microwaveables were,” Sicheng grimaces in the memory, “passable.”

Mark slams his hands on the counter, startling some other customer who sniffs disapprovingly, before he rushes over and props Sicheng onto a chair for extra emphasis. “My dear Watson, two words. Food. Trucks. They’re amazing, they’re like, local legends in these parts. On Tuesdays you can get a special discount on mystery meat at the Mexican one between here and 4th Avenue, but my favourite’s definitely the Spaghetti burgers down at … “

Mark rambles on, and Sicheng leans against a spare table as he watches Mark scribble in his trademark scarcely legible handwriting onto a receipt roll, and Sicheng wonders absentmindedly how to procure simple kindnesses - paying off a student loan, becoming a regular customer with good company, before Mark looks up with a twinkle in his eyes.

“So, Sicheng. Since you’re new to the area, you would’ve gotten a place. Or rented one, I don’t know nuts about housing.” Mark shuffles his feet, and his fingers are tapping a rhythm with the ballpoint pen. He's nervous, and it shows. “Would you happen to be looking for a housemate, by any chance?”

Sicheng blinks, and finds himself nodding hesitantly. “I mean, if it helps you out, sure?”

“Great! So here’s the skinny. My mate Johnny recently moved from the north side of town, and he’s been looking for a place to crash, so he’s been on my couch for a week, but I gotta tell you, my mum’s not too hot on him these days. It’ll be doing me a real solid if you could let him be your housemate, he pays rent and everything!”

Sicheng blinks again, before his face schools itself into something less surprised. “Uh. Yeah, Johnny’s more than welcome at my place. You’re sure he’s okay with this, Mark?”

Mark flashes him a humongous smile, and the fleeting sting of confusion ebbs away. “He’s totally cool beans, no doubt. I’ll send him over tomorrow, yeah?” Mark throws him some double thumbs up, before a lady in a peacoat and the sniffy nose clears her throat impatiently and Mark scurries back behind the counter with a sheepish grin.

Sicheng shakes his head a little, and wanders back out of the store with his mind is a bit of a daze. And just like that he has a company in a house that has stood empty for almost 30 years.

-

Johnny, as it turns out, is a broad shouldered man with an easy smile and a mop of hair, and a penchant for rolling his shirt sleeves up as he heaves his bags into the 18th floor apartment. His muscles ripple as he strains against the straps of his duffel, and he lumbers through the door with a slightly awkward, somehow endearing gait.

“Hi, Sicheng right? M'name's Johnny.” Johnny drops his bags down with a dull thump, and runs a free hand through his fringe, forehead exposed, as he whistles at the apartment. He lets out a long exhale. “Wicked pad you've got here, man. Oh! Where's my manners?”

Johnny sticks out a palm, sheepish grin colouring on his face. Sicheng lets his eyes linger on the charismatic curve of the edges of his smile, and the handshake is firm, warm, as Johnny's hand envelopes his own.

“Nice to meet you.” At his words, Johnny grins again, and Sicheng is surprised at the amount of smiling the man does. “I trust Mark has told you of the arrangements?”

“Yeah, totally. Full detail. You sure you aren't some secret billionaire or something? Crib like this has gotta loads of Benjamins, and you’re probably fresh out of college too.” Johnny whistles again, appreciative.

Sicheng smiles politely, before he points to a room down the hall. “I’ll help you move in.”

The sun breaks through the blinds into the apartment onto the beginnings of something new. 

-

The first time it happened, it had been maybe two weeks since they’d finally moved the flimsy cardboard boxes from the living room, and Johnny had stepped in with a six pack of cold Budweiser, big grin on his face, and a pack of dusty DVDs under his other arm.

Fingers, skimming close under the blanket as they stare straight ahead with unfocussed minds. Bottles balanced tentatively, precarious in their hands. The buzz of alcohol and electricity burning red hot. In the middle of some shitty robot movie with badly tapered shots and jarring sound effects, the flickering television screen is the only source of light, and the throw blanket sweeps them under into something almost furtive, criminal.

In so in the dark of the room, Johnny is lean lines and towering height, strong arms and delicate lips. Large hands that palm through jeans, a curving nose that prods itself into the hollow of Sicheng’s collarbones. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, quick kisses and fast handjobs to take the stress off life, and Sicheng is nothing but grateful for Johnny’s casual suggestion on a forgettable movie night.

But these days, it’s getting harder and harder to remember the no attachment aspect of the arrangement, when Johnny kisses like it’s his last, hot breaths mingling, but his fingers tremble like they’re touching for the first time. The unwatched movie plays in the background, television lights illuminating the way Johnny’s mouth hangs open, the hard line of his jaw as Sicheng loses himself in tangling his fingers into Johnny’s hair, feeling the stove hot coil of want curl in his gut. 

Before the release comes, and the moment passes like it always does, and they heave onto their respective sides of the living room sofa, significant distance between them, and return to watching nameless movies with irregular breathing, and sweaty backs.

(That first time, Johnny had turned over to his side, looking at anywhere but Sicheng as he lit a cigarette and held it with shaky hands.

“Let’s keep this a secret.” The cigarette rolls, smoke drifting aimlessly. “I don’t even know if I’m into guys.” There is a stretching silence once more, broken only by the television murmurs. Sicheng watches a boy ride a halfpipe, sneakers skimming the sky, skateboard flying.

“I’ve always been straight.” Johnny takes a drag of his cigarette, and handles the condensing beer with careful fingers. He repeats it again, as if he’s reminding no one but himself. “I’ve always been straight.”

Sicheng takes a swig of his own bottle, and unfolds himself to retreat to his room, nursing a sullied feeling brought upon by Johnny’s last words that scratches at his insides. He feels something ugly rise in his throat, like bile.)

In the mornings, it is like the lonely nights of solace never exist. Sicheng downs his coffee like a forgotten beer bottle as Johnny taps his fingers on the counter and smiles languidly, smooth as honey.

_Let’s keep this a secret. ___

__-_ _

__Sometime earlier this week, Sicheng had been curled up on the scratchy leather of the living room couch, paging through some poorly written tabloids following some heiress’ divorce, when a small cough interrupted his perusal. Johnny stands to his right, looking small and shy suddenly in his tee shirt and sweatpants, hands wringing._ _

__Sicheng smiles. “Hey.”_ _

__Johnny sends him back a lopsided grin, before running his hands through his hair._ _

__“Hey, so my band's actually playing for a small gig tonight. It'll be cool if you could make it, but it's nothing big, really, so you're busy it's totally cool and I totally understand.” Johnny rushes over his words like a crashing stream clumsily tumbling over smooth pebbles, and before he opens his mouth to let more words stumble out, Sicheng puts his hand atop Johnny's, and smiles assuringly._ _

__“I'd be more than happy to. When?”_ _

__Now Sicheng stands outside a pulsating bar, fingering the edge of a crumpled slip of paper. Disco hues flash onto the concrete streets outside, and a blur of dancing masses are just beyond the heavy velvet curtains. Sicheng bites his lip, and the lights hit him._ _

__“Hey! Sicheng! Over here!” A familiar voice calls out, and Sicheng feels himself being blindly pulled over to a table at the side, obscured slightly from the dancefloor, translucent curtains swinging gently. The lights flicker overhead, and Mark stands before him, smiling, panting slightly._ _

__“Johnny said you’d be here.” Mark claps him on the shoulder, ears already pink from the bottles of beer strewn on the table. “Nice spot, right? Guests of the band, they say.”_ _

__Sicheng smiles, and nods inquiringly at the boy beside Mark, honeyed skin, curly hair and mischievous eyes._ _

__“Oh, this is Donghyuck. He’s - uh - he’s my - my guest.” Donghyuck visibly rolls his eyes, and Mark looks pointedly at anywhere but their raised brows, mortification blooming across his face not unlike the blush of alcohol, before exclaiming loudly. “Hey! Check it out! The band’s about to start - haha! Let’s just get on over there!”_ _

__The crowd is anxious, the buzz of anticipation high in the air, breaking the people into a semblance of sobriety, and Sicheng feels them pulse against him, toes tipping for a good glimpse of the band. It’s electrifying, and in a moment, Sicheng understands why._ _

__When the lights hit Johnny, casting him in a blinding assortment of blues and yellows and purples, Sicheng feels his breath hitch in his throat._ _

__Every blast on the amp feels like it rattles his ribcage, shatters his teeth, breaks into his body with a wave of tangible sound, like Sicheng was being thrust head first into a washing machine._ _

__And yet the feeling is somehow less disconcerting than the steady thumping of his heart, pounding with each strum of Johnny's guitar._ _

__Suddenly it's almost as if his heartbeat was reverberating in the low bass line, and when Johnny locks eyes with him, sweat slick bangs falling into a cheekbones, mouth hanging open slightly, eyes half lidded and lost in the haze of music, Sicheng forgets how to breathe._ _

__-_ _

__The gate is thrown open with flourish, and Johnny’s leading him by the arm, Timberlands pattering and kicking up gravel in anticipation._ _

__Sicheng grimaces at the muted screaming and laughter rising from beyond the front door, tugging his jacket tighter against the chilly November winds. Johnny looks over, hand poised to rap on the door, before he catches the tentative shadow that crosses Sicheng’s face, and pauses._ _

__“C’mon, liven up, man. Ten’s hosting tonight and he throws the best parties.” Johnny’s smiling, bright teeth and hopeful eyes, leather jacket seeping in some horrible cologne he picked up at a value store, and Sicheng doesn’t have the heart to tell him that this sort of party was nothing compared to the grandeur of the ones thrown by Song Qian so many decades ago._ _

__The door swings open, and a man with an elfish smile and a jacket that barely covers his bare chest stands in the frame._ _

__“Damn straight I do. Glad you made it, John.” Ten steps forward, eyelids glittering, and claps his hands on Johnny, creasing leather. “Hey! Sicheng, nice to finally meet you. I’m the lead vocalist of our little band. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet the other night, it was really too hectic. ”_ _

__Ten leans forward to hug, and he smells like expensive cologne, above the lingering acrid of cigarette smoke. Ten feels familiar, eyes sharp like glass and a guarded grip that makes Sicheng pull away, and smile tight. Sicheng decides there and then that Ten feels too much like Seulgi, from Busan, with his cutting gazes and careful hands, and Sicheng stays away._ _

__The rest of the band is introduced throughout the night, wrapped around the crowd, voices loud and carrying over the boombox. Kun is a quiet man, but the crowds rise with rigour when his fingers dance across the keys of a piano. Mark’s to the side of the room, drifting in and out of drunken giggles as Donghyuck smooths a hand over his back with a tired smile, and Sicheng feels his heart warm. Johnny’s arm is draped across Sicheng’s shoulder, heavy and hot in the confinements of the room, but it is at once a promise and a chain._ _

__Yukhei, ever the drummer, mixes the drinks with deft hands and flashy tricks, sweat pooling on his tank top, and his eyes are dark but his smile is bright, carefree. Johnny’s somewhere in the back, mingling with some old friends, and Sicheng leans against the kitchen cabinet, feeling the beginnings of a familiar game._ _

__A pretty brunette hangs off Johnny’s arm, wrapped skin tight in purple lycra, purring into his ears, not a sliver of space between their bodies. Johnny’s whispering something, sweat slicked hair dripping between their faces, curtain-like, a cat-like smile creeping across his face as she giggles up at him and bats her eyelashes._ _

__Sicheng leans against the door frame, drink swirling idly in his hands, watching a splotch of water spread across the dim ceiling. Yukhei had left a half hour ago, and Sicheng guesses that he’d found someone else to eye._ _

__Johnny’s got his arm wrapped around the pretty brunette now, tucking her tighter than he had Sicheng. Sicheng keeps his face stilled, and then Johnny looks up before he leaves, just once. Their eyes meet, dark, furtive, a shared secret, before the moment passes just like any other, and Johnny whisks beyond the beaded curtains to upstairs, one hand palming steadily the small of her back._ _

__Sicheng wipes his mouth with his knuckles, feeling a burn in his chest that he doesn't want to acknowledge. The ugly feeling rises once more in his throat, and so Sicheng downs another drink, lets the cold wash of beer drown him in, numb his heart._ _

__The night wears on, and when Yukhei sidles up to him, punch-drunk slurs dripping from eager lips, wandering hands and sweat-slicked hair so alike Johnny’s, Sicheng bats his own eyelashes and presses himself closer._ _

__(Yukhei kisses eagerly, burning, slightly sloppy. His hands are insistent, probing underneath his shirt, calloused hands and wiry biceps. Yukhei also towers over him, and when Sicheng closes his eyes, he imagines the hard lean lines of shared movie nights._ _

__“God, let’s head back to my place.” Yukhei whispers against the shell of his ear, hot breath fanning. “Give Johnny and his chick some privacy.”_ _

__At the name, Sicheng’s teetering, and so instead he tangles his fingers into Yukhei’s hair, eyes fluttering shut. He presses their lips together, teeth clicking, and he tries to forget there was ever someone else.)_ _

__-_ _

__Mark rests his chin on his palm, and there's a smug look threatening to break across his face like a cat that ate a canary. It's too early to deal with Mark's prodding fingers, but Sicheng slides into the convenience store standard issue chairs, and twists his mouth into a faint imitation of a smile._ _

__Mark bursts into conversation like a barrelling train, barely able to contain himself._ _

__“I saw the way you looked at Johnny last night.” When Sicheng doesn't respond, Mark sighs loudly and rolls his eyes. “Cos' I used to look at Donghyuck like that, all moony till he decided to date me.”_ _

__“Johnny’s straight.” Sicheng doesn’t mean for the words come out harsher than expected, bitter and a little angry, but they thrash their way out of his mouth before he can stop and think. Mark’s hands freeze, and his jaw snaps shut, as he purses his lips, eyebrows furrowed._ _

__Sicheng's voice is flat. “There’s nothing between us. You’ve made a mistake.”_ _

__Mark sits stunned. The dust drifts across a dreary imitation of sunlight. The silence stretches and stretches and stretches. And Sicheng continues staring out the window._ _

__-_ _

__Sicheng toes off his shoes quietly, peripherally aware that Johnny’s latest girl may still be at the apartment. There’s nothing in the air other than the faint whiff of cigarette smoke, but when he stumbles into the kitchen, the fresh aroma of brewed coffee hits his nose, and Johnny’s perched on the island, a mug in his hands and surprise on his face._ _

__“Oh! Hey!” Johnny looks up, eyebags sullying his smile, hair damp from the shower and flopping into his face. “You didn't come home that night. Yukhei left early too.”_ _

__“Hey. Yeah.”_ _

__Johnny hands him another cup of steaming black coffee with a shrug. “Didn’t know how you liked it. But I’ve got sugar and milk right here if you need it.” There is a pause, and Sicheng stares at the swirling abyss of dark brown in his hands. The silence grows awkward, and so Johnny clears his throat, raises a brow. “Didn’t know Yukhei was into - you know, guys, either. Like, gay.”_ _

__Sicheng’s mouth hardens._ _

__There’s a lot of things he wants to do in that moment. He imagines throwing the cup of coffee to the ground, dark inky contents spilling over them all and he’ll relish the burn of something that’ll make him feel alive. He imagines yelling at damp haired, soft eyed Johnny, about how he loves him and this wasn’t fair, that this wasn’t how it’s supposed to go. He imagines how he’ll suddenly cave in on himself, and on his fear, on how stupid he’s being chasing someone who’s just getting further and further away. He imagines slamming the door and stomping out, fire coursing through his veins as he flees from his heartbreak. He imagines closing the distance between them and claiming Johnny’s lips, kissing him harder and harder until they’re molding together as one as he whispers mine, mine, mine in the spaces between their breaths._ _

__“Yeah, well I guess he is.” Sicheng manages to smile without making it look like a grimace, and if Johnny is shocked, he doesn’t show it. Sicheng brushes his knuckles against the curve of Johnny’s bicep, mischievous glint in his eyes. “Now, you tell me, how was that brunette last night?”_ _

__The uneasy fragile shadow that had been cast over Johnny's face lifts, and when he opens his mouth to blabber excitedly about how good it was, or how she was just his type, Sicheng can't help but watch the curve of Johnny's lips, can't help but wonder what it was like to kiss them not under the inky cloak of night-lit secrecy, but under the scorching vulnerability of daylight._ _

__-_ _

__And so eventually Johnny is the heartbreak that was never supposed to be. Sicheng chases and chases an endless race with no finish line, tiring himself out with each step but he continues even knowing the truth of their asymptote, forever to curve._ _

__Months pass with Johnny stumbling home every fortnight with a new girl in his arms, and movie nights become just an excuse to feel a presence by his side, and not the crushing constant of loneliness._ _

__Sicheng drifts in and out of the convenience store, letting Mark watch him with barely concealed pity. And after a few months of dragging himself around, numbed with drinks, Sicheng sets the lease deed to his apartment in a name not his own, and packs his bags without a goodbye._ _

__On the day he leaves, Johnny’s sprawled out on the living room couch, asleep, a bowl of chips balanced precariously in his arms as a sports announcer yells excitedly about a game._ _

__It is daylight. And so Sicheng has no right to be anything more than a friend._ _

__A bottle of Budweiser seeps condensation onto the carpeted rug, and Sicheng frowns at it. Johnny’s never drunk while the sun was still up. Johnny murmurs something under his breath, and Sicheng leans forward, hovering, and for a second furtive as if he didn’t belong._ _

__His watch beeps on his wrist, a reminder for his flight, and so the moment passes like it always does. Sicheng pulls himself back, and shuts the door on another chapter of his life._ _

__If he had lingered, perhaps he would have heard the gentle utterance of his name slipping subconsciously from Johnny’s lips, or he would have understood the struggle of sexual identity culminating in breakfasts of beers._ _

__But Sicheng doesn’t linger, and words that were never said in the silence became lost forever._ _

__(“I’m headed out of town.”_ _

__There’s a look of contemplative seriousness that crosses Mark’s face, reflected in the furrow of his brow, before it vanishes just as fast. Mark leans back as though he's appraising Sicheng, who is faintly aware of a proverbial interrogative light shining on him. It is very alike and yet unlike that day months ago when Mark had first voiced his astute suspicions aloud._ _

__“You're doing this because of Johnny.” Mark finally says with a bitter twist of his lips and a knowing look in his eye._ _

__Sicheng struggles to keep his face passive, feels the old wound reopen. “Yeah. It was a mistake.”_ _

__“So you've loved and you've lost.” Mark's mouth curves up, wry and older. “But everyone's gonna go through that, at some point. Doesn't mean you keep hiding behind what you think protects you. There’s a difference between being alive, and living. And now? _You're alive, Sicheng, but not by much._ ”)_ _

__Sicheng thinks about Mark's words when he sits in the plane, skies barrelling past him. An untouched plastic cup of airplane wine sits on his tray table, and Singing stares long and hard at the world beyond his window._ _

__Eventually, a smile creeps into his face. For the first time, he doesn't leave the guilty trail of broken hearts and unkempt promises, doesn't feel the noose of regret tighten on his neck. But it remains an unsatisfying climax of a chapter, and so it is a bitter smile, a sharpness so similar to the hit of cold beers on late nights, a softness so similar to the loving drape of an arm, the downy press of a obscuring blanket._ _

__The plane drones on, amongst the endlessness of the horizon. Death was always for the living._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so so so much for reading this story still. the next chapter (and maybe one more after that) ties up some small loose ends and will be up within the week. 
> 
> please leave a comment and a kudos because it means so so much to me! love you all so much for sticking w me


	7. (+2, doesn't mean you have to forget)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise updates! extra mini chapter.  
> i wrote this in one sitting, might be a bit messy but i couldn't get it out of my mind.
> 
> playlist:  
> love like this by kodaline  
> high hopes by kodaline

**1998; Seoul, South Korea**

The plane touches down gently, and there’s an air of recognition that hangs in the atmosphere. New York was never anything like Korea, and as Sicheng hears the murmurs of a decades-lost language of his home, lilting Korean amongst people holding up paper signs with eager eyes, he smiles even though there is no one here for him, no sign held up bearing his name, no weeping family.

The airport is busy, packed with bustling crowds even in the early hours of the morning. A mother pushing two toddlers in a stroller and eyebags dragging her face down, a straggly scruffy faced foreigner folded into the public waiting area seats nursing a coffee, a young woman waiting on the balls of her feet before leaping into someone’s open arms.

Sicheng sinks into the plush seat of the coffee joint, idly stirring his jasmine tea with two sugar cubes, watching the travellers flit and bustle all around him. He is a single unmoving constant amidst the rushing motions, a plastic stirrer amidst sugar cubes, he muses.

_“Sicheng?” ___

____

____

He turns to see an middle-aged man, nearing his seventies, perhaps, in a green woollen sweater, with kind eyes and a sharp face that has aged gracefully. Those kind eyes are, however, narrowed in a particular accusatory confusion that only spells trouble, and something about him is very unnervingly familiar as Sicheng feels an uneasiness creep into his gut.

Upon meeting the man’s eyes, Sicheng sees a rainbow of emotions flash across his face; shock barrelling into the forefront, followed closely by anger, elation, before the face settles into pain.

“I never believed - ” The man’s voice breaks off, as he stares long and hard at Sicheng, who feels his skin prickle under the intensity. The man’s wrinkled and hardened hands raise themselves to rub at his face as he groans in disbelief.

“God, I think I would have recognised you anywhere.”

Sicheng smiles tight, and his breath comes up short. His throat is tightening around his voice, and his next words come out laced in a barely concealed panic. “Sir, I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person.”

The man slides into the seat opposite, his gaze unwavering. Sicheng keeps smiling, his teeth bright and shiny and plastic and full of hollow fear. Sensing the distress spiking in the air, the man slumps down, his shoulders defeated.

“You haven’t aged a bit, Sicheng. Taichung, 1953.”

A dawning breaks over Sicheng like the release of a dam. A slimy feeling of regret trickles down his back like runny egg yolk, cold, unflinching. The deft fingers of his mind pluck a dusty, crumpled box from the shelves adorning the edges of his memory, and the images of rolling fields and kind eyes and a tangerine basket of a heart come unfurling like a film reel.

Sicheng looks at the man with new eyes, his stinging tears accompanying the uncomfortable lump at the back of his throat. He sees a young boy reflected by a sunrise, a palm on the window, a broken expression on his face as the car speeds away. 

“Renjun,” he breathes, after a long pause. “Renjun,” he repeats, slow and careful and scared.

Renjun smiles at him, a serene look on his face. And then something dark crosses it, and an unsaid name hangs in the air between the two men, a ghost hovering tentatively over their cups of tea. There is a Taeil-shaped hole between them that neither are brave enough to breach.

After a while, Renjun takes a sip from his cup, and his eyes bear a heaviness. When he speaks again, it is gruff, but not harsh. “You broke my brother's heart. I'll never forget that.”

Sicheng sinks into his seat, and holds his head in his hands. An anchor drops into his gut, disappointment and regret prickling through his veins like drawn by some magnetic field. His leaden eyes can’t seem to raise themselves to meet Renjun’s.

“I’m not angry.” Renjun’s voice is quiet, calm, as if he was looking over the croissant selection on the menu in front of him. “I admit I was, back then. I was so angry I thought I would’ve boxed you so hard that maybe it would’ve knocked sense back into my brother.”

Sicheng looks up, and Renjun’s face is impossible to read. Sicheng doesn’t know how to navigate this conversation, and he feels like he’s in the deep end of the pool. Sicheng feels like a swirl of paint on his discarded canvases, confused, thick and swampy and drowning.

“I’m sorry.” Two words mean so much more than a person could ever hope to convey. There is decades of pain in the three syllables, of untold memories and heart hurt guilt. There is love and loss and all the little things in between underneath cloudless blue skies. But in the end, two words is all Sicheng can bring himself to utter without crying. _“I’m sorry.”_

“He would’ve liked to hear that, probably. But it’s past the time for apologies. I realised after a while that anger that warms me then, would leave me cold in my grave.” Renjun takes another sip from his tea, and when he lowers the cup, there’s a soft curve on his lips that Sicheng tries to find it within himself to mirror weakly.

“And he always kind of fell too hard anyway.” Renjun’s voice comes out pinched and a little strangled with a longing ache. They share a watery laugh, barely drifting above the din of the airport.

“I'm glad to see you, Renjun. Is - uh is he still around?”

“No,” as Renjun’s shoulders sink a little. “He passed a few years back. Sick.”

They sit in a passive silence for a few moments longer, fingers curled around their cups as steam rises in wispy puffs. The world around them continues to bustle, rushing by, unaware of the poignant loss shared between souls in a coffee parlour.

“I struggled. For a long time. Not knowing why you left.” Renjun’s fingers tap a undecipherable rhythm onto his cardboard cup, and for a fleeting second, looking very small and very young and very vulnerable.

Sicheng smiles a little at the words, bitter. He gestures at himself, and Renjun laughs, low and full-bellied. “I suppose you can guess why.”

“I think I knew, or had at least an inkling, that something wasn't letting you stay. But I’d never guessed, what, immortality? Even that’s too extreme for a kid.” Renjun huffs a small laugh. “But you always smiled a little like you were afraid you were going to break.”

Sicheng stills. His smile wavers off his face, falters and becomes too heavy to prop up any longer. The weight of living sinks into his bones, and the memories of too many different pasts and broken hearts dredge themselves through his mind’s eye. His hands tremble against his cup, and Renjun’s worried face peers at him, concern lining his wrinkles into sharper contrasts.

“Well, you’re not alone anymore.” Renjun says gruffly, his eyes shining in the same kind-hearted likeness that Taeil had exuded all those years ago. “C’mon. You got anywhere to stay? My son’s serving enlistment now, and my wife seems to forget there’s one less mouth to feed.”

Sicheng remembers the low murmurs of a broken promise, the barrelling dust of a car, the coldness of the rattling window against the dirt road. But Sicheng also remembers lazy sunlit days spent frolicking in the fields, chasing after lilac sweaters and tumbling through the peaches with laughter that rose beyond the skies. He remembers hot chocolate in well-worn mugs on his countertop, identical grins curving over the rims, slices of freshly baked cake on mismatched plates as the windows propped open in a tiny kitchen. Most of all, he remembers kind eyes and a basket of hand plucked love, a voice that spun songs into springtime, long afternoons curled against another body, heartbeats in tandem as eyelashes fluttered soft. 

A smile cracks across his face, and Renjun stands, his eyes warm and kind and familiar. Sicheng picks up his leather suitcases.

“Renjun, do you have any tangerines at home?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'the anger that warms you now will leave you cold in your grave' is a beautiful quote i'd seen from someone's dream retelling on tumblr.
> 
> the next chapter is the final epilogue and it ties up things. thank you so so so much for reading and please leave a comment or a kudos because it means so much to me! much love


	8. hello again (back to the beginning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is the epilogue, it's a little short but i didn't want to put it off any longer.
> 
> playlist:  
> try again by d.ear & jaehyun  
> little wonders by rob thomas (from disney's meet the robinsons)

**2015; Seoul, South Korea**

He dreams of the rickety barn in the countryside again. 

He wakes in a field, golden wisps of wheat brushing themselves gently against his skin, ticklish and not uncomfortable. The sky is waning above his squinting eyes, cloudless and endlessly blue. It looks like the fields of Taichung, for a moment, before an inexplicable saltiness in the breeze makes Sicheng think of Busan’s docks. His heart constricts with only the rawness of age-old wounds, but Sicheng stands unshaking, a black dot in the sea of yellow fields, dusts his hands, and sets forward with a sureness in his steps betrayed only by his clenched, trembling jaw. He knows where he is.

He trudges along a familiar path, and eventually finds himself amidst tall walls of brick red, paint peeling away to reveal wooden beams disintegrating, and he knows that somewhere further in, there's a letter buried under a mound of moth-ridden blankets, and an unidentifiable decayed splotch atop it all. He can only assume that the letter itself has been left untouched for almost a century, dated to a lonely night in 1890.

The barn has aged together with him, and it stands as a ghost of what it once was, and the warmth Sicheng once felt within its walls has been stripped away to nothing but wooden structures serving the sole purpose of functionality. Decades ago, there was the glimmer of new life in the chirping echoes of baby chicks, and the tender kiss of a new beginning in the cherry of Taeyong’s lips. 

But today, the barn is a husk of its past, and Sicheng stands squinting at the unidentified splotch, and pondering how imaginative this dream is going to be. Perhaps one of his darkest fears would spring out of the blankets to attack him. Sicheng scratches the back of his neck, and prods the pile of blankets with the tip of his hiking boots, after a few seconds, a smile appears when he is seemingly pleased that nothing springs out to attack him. Deciding the mound is safe for exploration, Sicheng begins peeling the blankets away, searching.

His fingers come across the distinctive texture of paper after a while, and smiling wistfully, he pulls out a wrinkled, but carefully enveloped letter from underneath the blankets. It's yellowed around the edges, and the paper, through sheer force of will, just barely keeping itself from crumbling into history. Scarcely legible handwriting scratched across in inky browns, and most of the words have lost themselves to age.

Sicheng illuminates the letter against the streaming sunlight drifting in from the open barn window. It may have been written by himself, but this was a Sicheng from over a century ago. It is largely, however, undecipherable sentences, and he grumbles softly to himself, before he spies a seemingly unaged, unfazed sentence near the bottom of the page.

The sunlight is dimming, turning dusky, but the words are as clear as the day they were written. But Sicheng is barely grasp the words before his body tumbles into an abyss below him, the memory of his whispered words under the waning moonlight slip through his fingers like drifting sand, the floor sinking beyond view and he is left stretching and stretching for a lifeline towards disappearing red wood.

He falls for what seems like forever, surrounded only by an oppressive inky darkness, illuminated only by the occasional twinkling star. Most nights, he falls until morning arrives in the streaming sliver of dawn and the beeping cars of the city and he jolts awake in a tangle of bedsheets. But some nights, as he slips through the veil, he hears a voice pierce through the dark, and the fall becomes less lonely, less nebulous when he just has that trickle of sunlight.

It is his own voice, brimming with hope and sadness and the beginnings of a truth he still can barely face to this day.

 _We'll find each other again,_ he hears himself say, _but until then, know that i'll love you forever._

-

When the morning arrives, Sicheng is walking down the busy streets, coat flapping a rhythm onto the buckle of his leather carry-on, the slanting angulars of the city imposed against the gloom of the overcast day. He's running late, and he knows that the management won't appreciate it, but he ducks in anyway into the sepia arches of a nearby coffee shop anyway for his morning fix. 

Renjun invited him over for dinner sometime this week, something about the Lunar New Year, and the birth of his granddaughter, and he remembers vaguely that he has yet to respond. He groans, fumbling with his pockets and tapping a slow, hesitant message onto the clicking tiles on his phone. A woman beside him in the queue glances over, amused as he squints at the keys.

The faint sunlight trickles in from the windows, barely perceptible, and Sicheng eyes the creamy wooden decor, the haphazard succulents basking on each table, and he scans the bent heads of patrons in the cafe, all bleary eyes and tapping feet, watched wrists rising now and then to let out a sigh of impatience. 

Sicheng's eyes pass languidly over a figure, wrapped in a simple white dress shirt, when he turns his gaze back suddenly, whiplash, eyebrows creasing. He rubs his eyes, for a second peripherally believing his sight to have failed him in some sleep-deprived curse. There is a flicker of recognition that flashes through his memory, just for a moment, a painful wrench of a familiar stranger. 

A man adorning a mop of white grey hair, drying at the edges, looking ethereal amidst the crowds. The whiteness of his being seemed to glow under the sepia lights, and Sicheng already knows that he would recognise that face anywhere.

He gathers his courage, tenses at the fluttering in the pit of his stomach, the mounting pressure in his chest so unlike the push of a angry forearm so, so many years ago. He finds himself moving forward, one small step at a time, and he has to remind himself to breathe amidst the pounding of his heart. He reaches forward with a mittened hand, and taps the man’s shoulder.

“Hi,” Sicheng breathes, soft and unsure. 

He’s too afraid to say something else that'll cut through the silence. Sensing a presence, the man looks up, tugging his earphones down, dyed white hair bristling around his expressive eyes, and times warps around them, shifts an entire century when their eyes meet. Sicheng feels like he is struck dumb.

He is painfully young, 18 in a small town in Incheon, as he falls in love all over again. 

The man peers at him, eyebrows raised, a slightly amused tug on his lips. “Uh, hi, do - do I know you?”

.  
.  
.

“ _Taeyong?_ ” 

.  
.  
.

( **1890; Jung-Gu, Incheon, South Korea**

Taeyong's breath is shaky, telling of nervousness, and his hands are cold, but earnest in their grip. Sicheng giggles under the intensity of Taeyong's gaze, sharpened by the harsh angles of moonlight. Sicheng leans his forehead against the other, grinning softly. 

“Come on, what's on your mind? You’re usually not so reserved.” His whisper is low, only for their ears. Taeyong's mouth twists up, almost as if to make a teasing remark, before something changes his mind, and his eyes flicker downwards instead. Sicheng frowns, and their hands squeeze together. 

“Let’s make a promise.” Taeyong begins, and his eyes have lit themselves in a fiery conviction, a seriousness stilling his features, his breath a harsh exhale of words. “A promise that we'll always find each other, in this lifetime, and the next and the next and the next. Again and again and again.” 

Taeyong lifts a warm palm to clutch at his chest, and his eyes are the brightest of stars. He continues, voice scarcely above a hoarse whisper, “I love you so much that I don't think I have enough love to give in just one life.” 

Sicheng presses their foreheads together again, and breathes in slow. “Of course.” Their hands tighten around one another, and Sicheng presses gentle kisses to Taeyong's forehead, punctuated with every word. “Of course. Of course.” 

Their lips meet, soft and sweet and warm and like they always belonged, and Sicheng murmurs into the spaces between them. _“I promise.”_ ) 

__

.  
.  
.

**2018; Seoul, South Korea**

The sunlight trickles into the bedroom, and Taeyong lies alone, legs tangled in the whiteness of blankets and an arm outstretched to reach nothing. He blinks into consciousness, and frowns at the coldness of the sheets. The sheets are undisturbed, spotless. The bed is empty.

“Love?” 

There's no response, and the sharp burst of fear hangs in the empty air.

“Babe? Sicheng?” Taeyong stumbles around the apartment, rubbing the sleep from his crusted eyes and confusion pressing into his heart, searching aimlessly, until he peers into the bathroom with dimming hope. He breathes a sigh of relief.

Taeyong finds Sicheng stilled in front of the mirror, towel hanging loosely on his hips and water droplets glistening on his back. But the man in question is unmoving, his eyes trained with ferocity at a single strand of hair he’s separated from the rest with a delicate press of fingers.

It is silver.

Sicheng turns to him, the most blinding, brightest beam stretched out on his face, and he is absolutely glowing. “I have a white hair,” Sicheng whispers like he’ll break the magic of the moment.

Taeyong raises a brow, amused, and his deft fingers ruffle Sicheng’s mass of black. “And a couple years back I used to have a whole head of it.” He chuckles, and he leans into Sicheng's shoulder. “But anyway, that’s what happens when you’re growing older, love.”

They laugh, and there is a warmth that creeps through them, steadily, giddily, until Sicheng blinks, surprised, and Taeyong’s hand is resting on his waist, on the curve of his back, and then there’s a spreading smile mirroring Sicheng's. He leans forward, pressing their lips together, and thinks in the back of his mind of the butterflies in his stomach, lifetimes ago, ignited by the very same boy from Incheon with all the stars in his eyes.

And Taeyong tastes exactly as he remembered.

-

(Sicheng realises after a while, that here’s the thing about immortality. Everything and everyone is always a flip of a page, a new chapter, here or there or elsewhere in the fickle thing that we call time. An endless novel that Sicheng used to brush his fingers against, spine unbroken and yet fraying at the edges, fading, before packing away them away into compartmentalised dusty boxes on the fringes of his memory. And so people come and people go, but they never leave, not really. 

Because ghosts are more than the silvers of people left behind, they are memories, spun golden from a broken heart, innocuous in the form of a charcoal drawing, a golden locket, a basket of tangerines, a scrape on his knee, and so, so many more. Ghosts live on in memories as simple as the peripherals of a comforting smile on a long day, or the clink of a brandy glass on a mahogany countertop and understanding eyes, or the throbbing strobe lights blasting his vision into a vast white blindness.

And so Sicheng is nothing but a lake, trembling under that waning moonlight from the ripples of a thousand fingers dipping in, colouring ripples, drawing outwards and spreading the beauty of life in all the ways he has ever experienced.

He’s spent an eternity running, and now as he holds Taeyong’s hand with no intent of ever letting go, he’s come to the understanding that nobody is ever gone, or forgotten - just scattered, instead, over the newer beginnings like falling snow, like fresh spring.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a happy ending?? incredible. this taewin epilogue was sitting in my drafts for ages, because i've always wanted sicheng to come full circle - his immortality begins and ends with his 1st and his Last love (also because i'm a sucker for taewin but shhh)
> 
> there are big gaps in time scattered around the story, skipping decades here and there, and i’m sorry if i have bludgeoned any historical facts
> 
> to clarify; taeyong was not immortal, but he was reincarnated, in a sense. but he doesnt retain his memories, so they're falling in love all over again. i would appreciate it so so much if you would leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this story. thank you for reading, and sticking by me through this!


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